The magical cloth : 'Wolverine cloth' which can heal itself
We all may have heard about the fictional character Wolverine from Marvel who is very powerful, can fight with people stronger than him and who has a self-healing skin.
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| Marvel character Wolverine |
Inspired by the character Wolverine, scientists have made a new material which is self-healing, highly stretchable and transparent material.
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| Wolverine material |
Specialities:
The invention of this cloth is a great achievement of modern science and technology. We know that human skin has self-healing power too. Now, are you thinking how??? So let me explain, whenever our skin tears or cut it recovers itself. Yes, it takes time and sometimes we use medicines to speed up the process but it always recovers.
As like that the Wolverine material also recovers itself. It heals itself from a scissor cut within 24 hours at room temperature.
And it is a soft, rubber-like material which can be stretched to 50 times its original length. Even just 5 minutes after being cut it can stretch to 2 times its original length. Sounds good!!
Its cost is also very low. So we can use products for longer times at a smaller cost.
And last but not the least it is also an ionic conductor so it is capable of conducting electricity through the flow of ions.
Structure:
This is the first time humans have been able to make a material with both self-healing property and ionic conductance by mixing a high-ionic-strength salt [ example = Hydrated Magnesium Sulphate(MgSO4 7H2O)]
and a stretchable polar polymer [ example = PEDOT:PSS]. (Ion -dipole force is an attractive force which results from the electrostatic attraction between an ion and a neutral molecule with a dipole). By mixing a high-ionic-salt and polar polymer, the small electrical imbalance generates electrostatic attraction and we get our dear Wolverine material.
Uses:
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| Magnesium Sulphate |
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| PEDOT: PSS structure |
Just imagine if our clothes were made of Wolverine materials then we have to wear the same cloth always as it won't get torn so no new cloths. Well, I think it's pretty boring. So just don't make clothes from Wolverine material. Let's do other things.
- We can't even remember how many times our smartphone was dropped from our hands and many peoples phone looks like this.
In future, we can use this material as the touch screen. It can recover itself so no more scratches and it has conductivity too. So, in my opinion, it could be used for that.
- It also can be used in space programs for making Antennas and other deployable devices as it is stretchable and its shape can be changed.
- We can use it in 3-D printing for fabrication too.
- This material can be used in Robotics. By using it we can make self-healing robots which will auto recover after a mechanical failure.
- Lithium-ion batteries are used in a large scale in Electronics and electric cars industry. Polymers are used as electrode compounds and electrode materials in LiB because of their properties such as low-density, easy processing, outstanding thermal, mechanical and electrical properties. This material has all of the properties and it is also self-healing so by using the material in LiB we can improve their functionality.
Lithium Polymer ion battery - In present time biosensors are largely used in the medical field and environmental monitoring. (Biosensors are the devices used to detect the presence or concentration of biological analytes such as a biomolecule or microorganism). Conducting polymers are used in different types of biosensors. So Wolverine material can be used as a polymer electrode by replacing the enzyme electrode.
Biosensor
So this material is very useful and it can lead Robotics and Nanotechnology to a whole new era where everything will recover automatically so less headache of maintenance.
What do you people think? Please share your opinion on this topic in the comments section.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_polymer_battery
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