Imperial College London has designed a kind of living material that would be very important in the future to repair certain structures or cracks . This allows an object made with this material to repair its damage on its own.
Studies have shown that bacteria can become embedded in water and respond to water damage by germinating and producing limestone or special glues that fill cracks.
A new method of autonomous repair
This is challenging as it is difficult to mimic and combine the many characteristics that biology can offer. Not only do you have to emulate the systems, but also design the biology to have additional specifications that are better suited to the needs we seek without direct intervention. The objective of this is to extend the useful life of a product and avoid possible failures in the systems before the problem can be seen with the naked eye, making the material able to think of itself.
The study authors set out to create new living materials that can repair themselves their damage through biological detection and response systems. To help do this, the team used similar materials that can detect changes in the environment that have already been used in previous work.
Thanks to this, versatile building blocks could be created that could be used for many different applications. Previously, living materials with built-in sensors that can detect signals and changes in the environment have been created, but now it is different. This new creation allows the material to detect damage and heal itself.
All of the research began using a bacterium that was genetically modified to produce cell cultures called spheroids. These can be arranged in shapes and patterns like building blocks, and the team put their self-healing skills to the test on a natural structural material called bacterial cellulose.
This cellulose can be used in various industries as it has a lot of resistance. The scientists pierced through a thick layer of bacterial cellulose and planted spheroids in what was left empty. The result was that, after three days of incubation, the spheroids repaired the damage and restored the material to its original shape.
Very important for the future of construction
The idea is that one future can integrate these spheroids into materials used in construction to give them the ability to repair themselves. In this way, walls or glass with cracks or potholes in the road could be repaired autonomously.
It is still a long way off, but it is a way of taking the first step and trying to develop a technology capable of achieving this and that would be very useful.
Even so, the idea is that it is applied first in small materials such as sponges or wood and then in much larger areas.