Self-Healing Mobile Phone Screens Inspired By Wolverine Coming Soon

A lifelong love for the comic book and movie character Wolverine led to the development of a self-healing technology for mobile phones. Chao Wang, a chemist and one of the lead researchers at the University of California at Riverside, points to Wolverine’s self-healing powers as their inspiration.

New Transparent Material

The transparent material is conductive, highly stretchable and self-healing. It would be a solution to the problem of smartphone owners, New York Post reports. Wang says the team is just starting to explore the applications of the technology expected to have various uses in consumer electronics and robotics.

Smartphone makers have shifted to stronger materials such as the Gorilla Glass and OLED display to create mobile phones with screens tough enough for daily use. However, accidents such as the gadget falling or being hit by other objects result in broken screens. The self-healing material is similar to the hydrogen-infused rear cover on the LG G Flex, Techeye notes.

Stitching Back In Less Than A Day

After several experiments, the team found that after the screen was torn in half, the display automatically stitched itself back in less than 24 hours. Wong says the self-healing material is not expensive, is easy to manufacture, soft, and like rubber which could stretch up to 50 times its original length.

The self-healing material produces a forgiving chemical bond between molecules that was stable under electrochemical conditions. Wong adds that a self-healing material, when carved into two parts, could go back together like nothing happened, similar to human skin. The team used an ion-dipole interaction, a mechanism, which is the force between polar molecules and charged ions. It is highly stable under electromechanical conditions. The team, who are also members of the American Chemical Society, would present the self-healing material this week at the society’s National Meeting & Exposition, V3 reports.