Team develops synthetic skin with self-healing properties

The findings from chemical engineering Prof Zhenan Bao and her team were published on 11 November in Nature Nanotechnology.

In the last decade, there have been major advances in synthetic skin, said Bao, the study’s principal investigator, but even the most effective self-healing materials had major drawbacks.

According to a statement, some had to be exposed to high temperatures, making them impractical for day-to-day use. Others could heal at room temperature, but repairing a cut changed their mechanical or chemical structure, so they could only heal themselves once. Crucially, no self-healing material was a good bulk conductor of electricity, a crucial property.

‘To interface this kind of material with the digital world, ideally you want them to be conductive,’ said Benjamin Chee-Keong Tee, first author of the paper.

The researchers achieved this by combining the self-healing ability of a plastic polymer and the conductivity of a metal.

They started with a plastic consisting of long chains of molecules joined by hydrogen bonds.