Self-healing Ink !

Magnetic Ink – has ability to self-heal.

If you are wearing a device on your skin and it gets broken, you don’t need to throw away; within a few second it’s going to self-heal and you can use it again and again. In San Diego, Joseph Wang’s Nano engineering lab at the University of California, a new ink is developed which contains magnetic particles. If a cloth or printed device prepared by this magnetic ink breaks, then the particles heals the fabric or device by attracting one another thus closing the gap. The research paper which was published by Dr. Wang’s team states that magnetic healing ink will repair cuts up to three millimeters long in just 50 milli seconds.

How will it be useful?

Day-by-day more wearable tech like shirts and shorts are invented and mostly they are made up of sensors making it more costly and rigid. Amay Bandodkar who studied in Dr. Wang’s lab and also an author of the study thinks that their research wanted create wearable devices that is skin like i.e. stretchable and self-healing. The magnetic contains includes ground neodymium magnets, which are found in hard drives and fancy refrigerator magnets. Researchers just pulverized these magnets into microscopic particles and incorporated them into the ink.

Benefits of this Ink

Usually to develop self-healing materials we always depended on chemical reaction known as polymerization but there are limits to it. Moreover they also require external inputs such as heats, cannot fill large gaps and cracks. They may also take hours to days to repair themselves.

Engineering professor at Stanford University, Zhenan Bao, who wasn’t involved in the study, says magnetic ink is a new concept for self-healing and believes that this method is simple, fast and does not needs additional heat, light or any other chemicals. They are low cost and even $10 worth ink can produce hundreds of small devices. Dr. Bandodkar also believes this magnetic ink can also be used for solar panels to implantable medical devices.

Do share your thoughts about this magnetic ink in our comment section below.

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