Biomimicry

"A fascinating new programme highlights how new materials are being manufactured that can actually heal themselves. From ByteSizeScience – “Our latest episode explores materials that mimic the human skin’s ability to heal scratches and cuts. For a first-hand look at self-healing plastics, we visited the lab of Nancy Sottos, Ph.D., professor of engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Inspired by human skin, the plastics repair themselves by “bleeding” healing agents when they are cut or scratched. This research offers the promise of cell phones, laptops, cars, and other products with self-repairing, longer-lasting surfaces.”"

"One of the more intriguing capabilities in nature is, however, the number of biological systems that are able to self heal. Scientists, spurred on by the potential economic benefits of materials that would be able to repair themselves  - longer lifetime, lower maintenance costs and more efficiency - have worked to develop self-healing systems for various materials, including plastics. And with success: various polymers are now available which have  the intrinsic ability to repair damage caused by usage over time. Up until now, however, composites, were a whole different ballgame. But once again, nature showed the way."

"Natural hierarchical systems share some common traits that are worthy of emulation: They use a few components (like keratin) to make a wide array of different structures in controlled orientations with durable interfaces between different materials. They are dependent or sensitive to water and produced with benign chemistry. Their properties and performances can vary in response to the environment. These complex, controlled shapes are resilient and often are able to repair themselves."

Living materials produced by bacteria could lead to interactive structures programmed to self-assemble into specific patterns, such as those used on solar cells and diagnostic sensors, and even self-healing materials that could sense damage and repair it.

"Engineers at two universities in Pittsburgh have copied the way amphibians regenerate their body parts in the model for the synthetic gel. [...]  The ability of amphibians to re-grow a limb or a tail was a "truly a remarkable thing", Ms Balazs said. She added: "You can mimic in a synthetic material something that happens in biology. It does not even happen in human beings, really."