果冻影院

Imagine concrete bridges that can heal cracks without human intervention, or tiny machines that can be injected into the body to treat disease.聽

These are just two applications for a category of smart materials that change and adapt to their environment.

Inspired by living things, they have the potential to transform the way we live, according to a new report.

But they might also need regulation to avoid unintended consequences, says the document from the UK鈥檚 Royal Society. The report is co-chaired by Professor Mark Miodownik, 果冻影院 MechEng Professor of Materials & Society.

Some 鈥渁nimate鈥� materials are already here: self-repairing paint and concrete that can patch itself up have made it into commercial products. But more applications are on their way.

鈥淭his is a really important century for us. We are going from an inanimate view of materials, where we make them, they are sophisticated but they fall apart and then we replace them, to a more biological view of the stuff we are going to make,鈥� said Professor聽Mark Miodownik. 鈥淏ridges in the future are going to know they are damaged and then they are going to be able to do something about it.鈥�

Other applications of self-healing materials are in phone screens that can repair themselves when cracked, and electronics that grow back damaged circuits, restoring function.

鈥淭he question in my view is not, if it鈥檚 going to happen, it is when it鈥檚 going to happen. The question is, is this report premature? I don鈥檛 think it is,鈥� said Professor Miodownik. 鈥淵ou see lots of little bits of it happening. So, now is the time to get the scientific community together to say: 鈥楾his is where we鈥檙e going, so now let鈥檚 change our mode of working鈥�. At the moment it is very disparate, with pockets of work all over the place, not talking to each other and without a common aim.鈥�