Self-Healing Plastic Skin

US researchers have taken a leaf out of nature’s book to develop a polymer-based system that can heal itself when it becomes damaged. The material relies on an underlying network of vessels — similar to blood capillaries — that carry a healing agent to areas on the material’s surface that become damaged. Unlike previous self-healing systems that relied on capsules of agent buried in the polymer and which became depleted after one use, the new system can respond to damage at the same point many times over