Next up for robots: Synthetic muscle

Human muscles inspire new super-stretchy, self-healing material

Soon your technology may be able to repair itself.
(Image credit: Vladislav Ociacia / Alamy Stock Photo)

Anyone who has ever smashed their iPhone's screen or depleted a battery knows that devices are destined to deteriorate and eventually die. But what if they could one day heal themselves? That's the vision Chao Wang, a polymer researcher and assistant professor in the chemistry department at the University of California, Riverside has for the future — and he helped invent a super-stretchy, self-healing polymer that could one day make it possible.

Together with colleagues at Stanford University, Nanjing University in China, and other institutions, Wang helped create a synthetic polymer that acts in some astonishing ways. In a recently published article in Nature Chemistry, they describe a material that can stretch to 100 times its own length — then make its way back to its original state. And when cut or punctured, it puts itself back together again.

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Erin Blakemore

Erin Blakemore is a journalist from Boulder, Colorado. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, Time, Smithsonian.com, mental_floss, Popular Science and more.