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# Self-Healing Material
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/self-healing-material/
- Published: 2012-06-22T19:05:24.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T16:46:00.000Z
- Description: Mimicking how our body responds to cuts, scientists work to create self-healing materials.
- Author: Ben Valentine
- Tags: Opinion, Science, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-24 06:51 (2012, 2013, part 1)

In many ways, when compared to manufactured objects, we are shockingly impermeable. We fall down, cuts and scrapes happen but unlike electronics, these accidents don’t short-circuit our entire bodies. Our bones heal, our cuts stop bleeding and if we get a virus our immune system usually can handle it alone.

Inspired by this, scientist Nancy Sottos, Ph.D., professor of Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign says, “in self-healing materials what we have tried to do is mimic that synthetically.” The video describes two systems; micro-capsules which, when broken essentially bleed, and then re-harden together re-bonded; or a micro-vascular system, which pumps a liquid-form of the material to where cracks have formed, which then hardens within minutes to equal or greater strength.

“Most people would like their cellphones or electronics to be self-healing, that is a little ways off,” but Sottos predicts that, “the application that will come out first, and a very useful one, is to have self-healing paint or coatings.” Could the use of paint mixed with micro-capsules become the magical anti-aging process to create eternal artworks? In the future, could public artworks no longer be limited in interactivity because any wear and tear would self-heal? Whatever the future of these materials, they will certainly open up new doors for architects, designers and artists.