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AnonTechie writes:

It sounds like something out of a Terminator movie. Chemical engineers at the University of Michigan have developed a plastic that instantly heals itself when it’s cracked by a bullet or other projectile.

Zavada and his lab mates had been working on self-healing materials for medical uses—surgical adhesives that could be used instead of stitches, for instance. But when they heard that a team at NASA's Langley Research Center was working on similar technology to try to quickly heal holes in space suits and outer space habitats, they switched gears. The University of Michigan engineers joined forces with NASA to create a material that solidifies once it is exposed to the atmosphere. “Once we started working with NASA, we decided we might be able to use the action of oxygen leaking to drive that reaction,” Zavada says.

Their goal was to create a material that could heal itself almost instantaneously, because, in space, a rip in a space suit or breach of a space station wall can be deadly.

Zavada and his advisor, Tim Scott, came up with a solution. They sandwiched tributylborane, a chemical that quickly hardens when it’s exposed to oxygen, between two layers of plastic. When one or both of the plastic sheets was punctured, the tributylborane immediately started hardening, covering the hole.

[Video]: https://youtu.be/JVWFvKxrcLg

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