Self-healing material helpful in Space Travel

Inspired by the comic book character Wolverine, scientists have developed a self-healing, highly stretchable, transparent material that can be used to power artificial muscles.

The end product is a soft, rubber-like material that's easy to produce at low cost. It can stretch to 50 times its original length, and can heal itself from a scissor cut in the space of 24 hours at room temperature.

Just 5 minutes after being cut, the material can stretch to two times its original length again – not a bad power for a comic book superhero to have.

The material is also an ionic conductor - capable of conducting electricity through the flow of ions - and this is the first time scientists have combined self-healing properties in an ionic conductor.

The team from the University of California, Riverside and the University of Colorado says it could ultimately be used in robotics, electronic devices, batteries, and biosensors. "Creating a material with all these properties has been a puzzle for years," says researcher and lifelong Wolverine fan, Chao Wang from UC Riverside.

"We did that and now are just beginning to explore the applications."

Wang says his love for Wolverine helped inspire his interest in self-healing materials, which mimic materials seen in nature, and can help extend the lifetime and lower the cost of man-made materials and devices.

This material can greatly benefit space travel due to its self-healing properties. In fact, Wolverine cloth was used in the Mars Orbiter Mission spacecraft of ISRO or the ‘Mangalyaan’. It was mixed along with ocean plastic and gold foil to make the outer body of the satellite. The mission proved to be a successful one and the world cannot wait for the wolverine-inspired possibilities science and the future hold.

Credits: Chao Wang, University of California Riverside