National Science Foundation

Plastic products have become part of our everyday lives. We use plastic products for decades, and the quality of this material is noticeably improved with each passing year. Almost impossible to find a branch industry, which is not used in its production of plastic. Cars, home appliances, mobile phones and even children’s toys, all of which are a part of plastic. Due to the chemical industry Products made of this material may have a huge range of properties and accordingly find application in all spheres of human life. Plastics are widely used in industry and at home. The possibilities of this material is enormous, some types of plastics can compete in their properties with natural materials such as metal, rubber or wood. Scientists from the University of Illinois, was invented by another kind of plastic, characteristics of this material is that if damaged material can itself restored. Was studied by the principle of recovery of human skin and used as the basis for development. If you would like to know more then you should visit Energy Capital Partners London.

The new plastic is made up of two layers: the top layer is a polymer with tiny particles of catalyst, while the lower layer consists of a set of channels filled with a liquid reducing agent. The principle of operation of such material is that once the top layer of plastic is exposed to mechanical damage and this damage comes to the bottom layer, the liquid from the channel is mixed with a catalyst and is automatically “Healing”, at this stage of self-destruction of cracks can be repeated up to seven times. Scientists have not abandoned their attempts to improve the material and argue that new types of polymer will be able to regenerate much more times. Analogue of the technology developed by a team of scientists from the University of California (UCLA), replacing the particles of the reducing catalyst on heat-sensitive reagent. One of the distinctive properties new material is that in areas of regeneration is not the so-called scars and strength of the material remains at 60%. Restoration of the material occurs at a temperature of 120 degrees Celsius. In addition, great advantage of this plastic is that it is transparent to electromagnetic waves, and has the properties of the insulator, which makes it indispensable in the use of radar devices, and communications equipment, industrial and military scientific research. Funding for this project is provided by the Division of Materials Research at the National Science Foundation (Division of Materials Research of the National Science Foundation).