Engineers develop new magnetic ink to print self-healing devices that heal in record time

A team of engineers at the University of California San Diego has developed a magnetic ink that can be used to make self-healing batteries, electrochemical sensors and wearable, textile-based electrical circuits.

The key ingredient for the ink is microparticles oriented in a certain configuration by a magnetic field. Because of the way they’re oriented, particles on both sides of a tear are magnetically attracted to one another, causing a device printed with the ink to heal itself. The devices repair tears as wide as 3 millimeters–a record in the field of self-healing systems.

Researchers detail their findings in the Nov. 2 issue of Science Advances.

“Our work holds considerable promise for widespread practical applications for long-lasting printed electronic devices,” said Joseph Wang, director of the Center for Wearable Sensors and chair of the nanoengineering department at UC San Diego.

Existing self-healing materials require an external trigger to kick start the healing process. They also take anywhere between a few minutes to several days to work. By contrast, the system developed by Wang and colleagues doesn’t require any outside catalyst to work. Damage is repaired within about 50 milliseconds (0.05 seconds).

Engineers used the ink to print batteries, electrochemical sensors and wearable, textile-based electrical circuits (see video). They then set about damaging these devices by cutting them and pulling them apart to create increasingly wide gaps. Researchers repeatedly damaged the devices nine times at the same location. They also inflicted damage in four different places on the same device. The devices still healed themselves and recovered their function while losing a minimum amount of conductivity.

For example, nanoengineers printed a self-healing circuit on the sleeve of a T-shirt and connected it with an LED light and a coin battery. The researchers then cut the circuit and the fabric it was printed on. At that point, the LED turned off. But then within a few seconds it started turning back on as the two sides of the circuit came together again and healed themselves, restoring conductivity.

“We wanted to develop a smart system with impressive self-healing abilities with easy-to-find, inexpensive materials,” said Amay Bandodkar, one of the papers’ first authors, who earned his Ph.D. in Wang’s lab and is now a postdoctoral researcher at Northwestern University.

More details available here.