Motoring News
The next time your car is scrapped chipped or scratched simply, park it in the sunshine and he damage will just disappear.
Tht's if your car is coated in a new polyurethane film developed by scientists from the University of Southern Mississippi, the scratch will repair itself in an hour.
Long-term testing will be necessary before the coating makes it into any commercial products.
The results of the research is detailed in the new issue of the journal Science.
The paper written by Marel Urban and Biswaji Ghosh deails the pairs developed a new macromolecule, which when the polymer is damaged and exposed to sunlight, it is capable of repairing itself, a process that could be applied to many uses.
The new coating is 99.99 percent standard polyurethane, a material found in a wide range of products, including hard plastic and soft foams. The remaining 0.01 percent is either a four-molecule oxetane ring or a long rod of chitosan. Chitosan is closely related to chitin, the hard material found in the shells of lobsters and crabs.
When the polyurethane is damaged, a ring of oxetane is also ripped open. Breaking the surface of the polyurethane also allows ultraviolet light to enter the scratch, which breaks apart a rod of chitosan.
The broken chitosan rods and oxetane rings then bond with each other across the damaged area, pulling the two sides together to eliminate the scratch. If the polyurethane coating is left in the sun, a scratch repairs itself in an hour.
The report says that the process only happens if the surface is damaged, and that it should be should be able to repair most scratches indefinitely. But since the material is so new, they haven't been able to conduct long-term tests.
Long-term testing will be necessary before the coating makes it into any commercial products. If approved, however, the coating could be used for a wide range of materials.
The product can be manufactured in a full range of colours by adding pigments. The research team say car paint is "the first application that comes to mind, but it can just as easily be adapted in a range of electronics, mobile phones, iPods, for instance.
Additionally according to the team as the product is made from a derivative of chitin, it is environmentally friendly, the use of renewable materials is an important selling point,