The technology inside our smartphones keeps improving, but the risks of cracking a screen remain infuriatingly high.
Toughened glass and external screen protectors help, but it’s still the case that if you drop your phone, you could be looking at an expensive repair bill.
Now, a team of researchers has come up with a material that could help phones to self-heal, and it uses a surprising special ingredient.
Linseed oil is commonly used to protect wood and is particularly well-known for its use on cricket bats.
The researchers, from the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST), used flax seeds – the source of linseed oil – and extracted oil to be added to colourless polyimide (CPI).
CPI is a transparent material that is increasingly being used as an alternative to glass, especially in the developing area of flexible screens.
The added oil element seeps into cracks when the CPI is damaged, potentially allowing the material to repair itself.
“We were able to develop a self-healing, colourless polyimide that can radically solve the physical properties and lifespan of damaged polymer materials,” the researchers claimed.
While it has yet to be produced at scale, the adapted CPI has looked impressive in laboratory testing.
The linseed oil was loaded into microcapsules, which were then mixed with a special silicone material that was used as a coating on the CPI.
When the screen is cracked, the coating releases its oil
If the CPI was cracked, the coating would also be damaged, releasing the microcapsules of oil.
These flow into the crack and harden when meeting the air, leaving the surface looking virtually undamaged.
Unlike previous attempts at self-repairing materials, this process is able to work without applying external pressure and also at room temperature.
Some conditions can speed the healing process though – including higher temperatures, high humidity and the presence of ultraviolet light.
Under UV radiation, the material can fill in up to 91% of a crack in 20 minutes.
There’s still plenty of work before this technology can be applied to the smartphone in your pocket, but the initial trials are promising, and it could have applications beyond personal devices.
Flexible CPI surfaces are also used in other settings, ranging from solar panels to artificial skin, and any technology that can make these things more robust could have a great utility moving forward.
Today’s news was brought to you by TD SYNNEX – the UK’s number one solutions distributor.
