A chemistry professor in Paris has come up with a kind of rubber that can "heal" itself. Self-healing rubber that binds back together after being snapped or punctured could pave the way for self-healing shoes, fan belts, washing-up gloves and more. Leibler and his colleagues built up their rubber from simple starting materials including vegetable oil and urea, a component of urine.
Leibler's team explained how their compound differs from regular rubber. Regular rubber is made of a single, continuous, stretchy molecule, held together with strong chemical links called covalent bonds. Once these bonds are cut by a break in the material, the rubber can't be reassembled. |
