Reading: Self Healing

By Andrew Williams,
Contributing Editor

A professor at the Paris? Industrial Physics and Chemistry Higher Educational Institution has developed a self-healing rubber compound.

Professor Ludwig Leibler has produced the compound based on fatty acids and urea (a component of urine). It has all the characteristics of normal rubber, but when two pieces are held together for 15 minutes it automatically re-establishes its molecular bond. This would, obviously, present problems when used in tyres, but the time delay is close to being eradicated.

According to Takuzo Aida, a chemist at Tokyo University, ?The discovery is very close to being used in business, and could have applications in anything from adhesives to tyres?.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 25th, 2008 at 1:17 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.