End of the smashed phone screen? Self-healing glass discovered by accident
▻https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/dec/18/smashed-cracked-phone-screen-self-healing-glass-university-of-tokyo
The new polymer glass is “highly robust mechanically yet can readily be repaired by compression at fractured surfaces”.
The properties of the polyether-thioureas glass were discovered by accident by graduate school student Yu Yanagisawa, who was preparing the material as a glue. Yanagisawa found that when the surface of the polymer was cut the edges would adhere to each other, healing to form a strong sheet after being manually compressed for 30 seconds at 21°C.
Further experimentation found that the healed material regained its original strength after a couple of hours.
Yanagisawa told NHK that he didn’t believe the results at first and repeated his experiments multiple times to confirm the finding. He said: “I hope the repairable glass becomes a new environment-friendly material that avoids the need to be thrown away if broken.”