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Self-healing Materials Possible With Springy Polymer Molecule
Duke graduate student Jeremy Lenhardt and associate professor Stephen Craig have been systematically hunting through a library of polymers hoping to find a polymer that can trigger a chemical reaction when it is stretched and enable a material to build its own repairs.
To stretch polymers and see what happens to them, Lenhardt uses an apparatus that pumps up and down on a solution filled with polymers, pressurizing it and depressurizing it 20,000 times a second which causes tiny bubbles to form fleetingly.
The void created by the bubbles exerts a tug on the ends of some of the polymers in the solution and stretches them, if only for a billionth of a second.
"Think of two rafts going down a river with a rope between them. As the first raft enters a rapids and accelerates forward, that rope - the polymer - gets pulled taught and stretches," explained Craig.
Over and over Lenhardt ran the experiment, characterizing different polymer species that became more reactive when stretched, potentially able to do "stress-induced chemistry."
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