Rubber Tree Inspires New Self-Repairing Plastic
Take the weight advantage of plastic, add the ability to self-repair small cracks before they become big cracks, and you’ve got yourself a durable new material that could improve the lifespan for thousands of ordinary objects, and help to reduce energy demand in vehicles and machines. That’s the idea behind a new kind of self-repairing plastic under development at several research centers around the globe, including the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany and Iowa State University here in the U.S.
Rubber Trees and Self-Repairing Plastic
Researchers at Fraunhofer took as their inspiration the rubber tree hevea Brasiliensis. Latex from the tree contains capsules that break open if the tree is damaged. That enables a protein called hevein to escape, which interacts with the latex to seal the wound. Initial tests on a synthetic rubber (synthetic caoutchouc), using microscopic capsules full of a simple adhesive, showed that the natural healing process can be replicated.
Self-Repairing Bioplastic
Meanwhile, over at Iowa State, a research team has upped the ante. Rather than focusing on petroleum based polymers, the team is set on developing a bioplastic with self-healing properties. Bioplastics are a maturing research field, but the idea of applying self-healing properties to a polymer made from vegetable oils is new. Lightweight, self-healing bioplastics could find many uses in aeronautics and other weight-sensitive, high stress applications, so it’s no wonder that the U.S. Department of Defense has chipped in funding for the research.
Image: Rubber tree by jonrawlinson on flickr.com.
Sign up for CleanTechnica's Weekly Substack for Zach and Scott's in-depth analyses and high level summaries, sign up for our daily newsletter, and follow us on Google News!
Whether you have solar power or not, please complete our latest solar power survey.
Have a tip for CleanTechnica? Want to advertise? Want to suggest a guest for our CleanTech Talk podcast? Contact us here.
Sign up for our daily newsletter for 15 new cleantech stories a day. Or sign up for our weekly one on top stories of the week if daily is too frequent.
CleanTechnica uses affiliate links. See our policy here.
CleanTechnica's Comment Policy
