Issue 49/2013 - USA develops self-healing polymer gels

American scientists have recently developed a new gel
that allows complex items to repair themselves.
The study was inspired
by amphibians whose limbs can regenerate.
This type of tissue regeneration is guided by three key command systems: beginning, spreading, and terminating
.

Anna Balaz, a professor of chemistry at the University of Pittsburgh's Swanson School of Engineering and Petroleum Engineering, who led the study, called it a "wonderful dynamic cascade process" and wanted to replicate it within synthetic materials
.
"We need to develop a system that first senses the removal of the material and initiates the regeneration process, then allows the process to spread until the material reaches the desired size and then terminates
.
" "The biggest challenge is to provide tissue for synthetic materials, and the circulatory system of biological organisms can enable the delivery of blood cells and genetic material, but synthetic materials do not have such a system
," Baraz said.
Therefore, we need to develop sensor-like devices to initiate and control the entire process
.
"
The new gel is embedded with nanorods and surrounded by a solution containing monomers and crosslinkers, and the system can replicate the entire dynamic cascade process
.
When part of the gel breaks, the nanorods near the tear act as sensors and move to the new interface, the chain or "edge" at one end of the nanorod will leave the nanorod at the local interface, and the point along the surface of the nanorod will trigger the polymerization reaction of the gel with the monomer and crosslinker in solution, thereby regenerating a new gel
.
(Xiaohua)