Fixing a scratch on your car could soon be as easy as parking it in a sunny driveway for an hour. Researchers have invented a self-healing coating that mends scratches when exposed to ultraviolet light, and say the material could keep everything from cars to iPods looking shiny and new. The research team
made the new coating by mixing chitosan—a derivative of chitin, the main component of arthropod exoskeletons—into polyurethane. They made tiny nicks in the new material, then exposed it to UV light about as intense as that given off by the sun. The radiation set off a series of reactions, causing damaged molecules to link up with each other again. The cuts healed in about 30 minutes [Wired].
For the new study, published in Science,
the team tested the compound's properties using a razor-blade-thin scratch. "We haven't done any of the tests to show how wide it can ...
