Researchers Discover at Least Some Metals Can Self-Heal

The finding opens up a whole new world of possibilities

Hiya!

The concept of self-healing is a popular one, especially when it comes to biology. The age-old quest for ever-lasting youth often coincides with the ability to self-heal. Pretty much everything alive has the ability to one degree or another, but the idea of anything not alive having self-healing abilities inspires images of Artificial Intelligence or a science-fiction future where planes, bridges, or even space crafts can self-heal.

Yet, such far-reaching scenarios are quickly becoming an everyday reality. After all, it wasn’t long ago when I wrote that researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) discovered an ingredient in Roman concrete that allowed it to self-heal cracks. A breakthrough that helped explain why so many Roman structures have survived the test of Time. Well, now, researchers are at it again, except instead of self-healing concrete, scientists have discovered that metals, too, can self-heal.

Materials Theory

Uppsala University in Sweden defines Materials Theory as “a research field where the focus lies on a quantum mechanical description of materials.” In other words, it’s the name of the research category directed toward understanding various materials on the ultra-tiny quantum level — such as their topological phases and superconductivity.

Understanding the properties of various materials on a quantum level and how those properties behave in different circumstances is vital for everything from advancing technology to choosing materials for building condos or bridges. More than that, though, if we understand materials on a quantum level, we can create new materials with desired properties.

Take metal, for instance. When stress is applied to cracked metal, traditional materials theory says the cracks should expand — like when a crack in a frozen lake grows when someone applies weight to it by standing on it.

One way machines break is due to fatigue damage, which is the result of repeated motions creating microscopic cracks. Over time, the stress causes the cracks to grow and spread across the metal, weakening it until one day, the whole thing breaks or “fails.”

Brad Boyce, a materials scientist at Sandia National Laboratories and Texas A&M University and one of the co-authors of a study I’ll tell you about soon, explains:

"From solder joints in our electronic devices to our vehicle's engines to the bridges that we drive over, these structures often fail unpredictably due to cyclic loading that leads to crack initiation and eventual fracture.

“When they do fail, we have to contend with replacement costs, lost time and, in some cases, even injuries or loss of life. The economic impact of these failures is measured in hundreds of billions of dollars every year for the U.S."

Considering that alone, we can understand how valuable materials theory research is. Even without creating new materials, the more we know how materials function in various situations, the safer our structures will be.