No More Potholes: Researchers Build Material That Can Self-Heal Damaged Roads

When it comes to commuting in Indian cities or towns, one of the most annoying elements of the whole experience has to be the frequency of potholes that we get to feel on a journey.

Reuters

Also Read: Dutch Research In Self-Healing Materials Could One Day Eliminate India's Pothole Problems

This not only makes the journey more time-consuming and bumpy, but it can also be unsafe, especially for those on bikes. We¡¯ve often wished these roads to be made strong enough to withstand the formation of potholes.

And now, researchers at the Imperial College of London have developed a new material that could result in self-healing potholes on roads and footpaths.

Published in the journal Nature Communications, the novel technology makes use of fluorescent 3D sphere-shaped cell cultures that are known as spheroids that are embedded with sensors that can sense if they¡¯ve been damaged.

These are made of the bacteria Komagataeibacter rhaeticus. Researchers picked this bacteria due to its non-motile nature. To test the newly developed engineering living material or ELM, scientists punched holes in a thick layer of the bacterial cellulose, essentially a mould of sorts made by bacteria on which ELMs are grown.

Imperial College London

Also Read: Scientists Have Made A Self-Healing Material That Also Helps Reduce Carbon Dioxide From The Air

Three days later, the material healed itself and restored the consistency and appearance just like it was before. This was because ELMs consist of cells that allow it to create their own material.

The study's lead author, Dr Joaquin Caro-Astorga, of Imperial's Department of Bioengineering, said in a statement, ¡°The discovery opens a new approach where grown materials can be used as modules with different functions like in construction. We are currently working on hosting other living organisms within the spheroids that can live together with the cellulose-producing bacteria.¡±

He added, ¡°The possible living materials that can come from this are diverse: for example, with yeast cells that secrete medically relevant proteins, we could generate wound-healing films where hormones and enzymes are produced by a bandage to improve skin repair.¡±

The next stage is to create spheroid building blocks with different features and fuse them with other materials like sponges, wood or cotton. In its ultimate avatar, researchers could develop new kinds of products like biological filters and implants to even roads that can fix themselves.

Also Read: Scientists Create Self-Healing, Reproducing Bricks That Will Change How We Build Houses

Imperial College London

Dr Patrick Rose, science director of US Office of Naval Research Global London further explained, ¡°The challenge is to mimic and combine the distinct features biology has to offer. We are not only trying to emulate those systems, but engineer biology to have additional features that are more amenable to the needs we seek without direct intervention."

Rose added, "Ultimately, we want to increase the lifetime of a product, prevent failures of systems before the problem is visible to the naked eye and have the material think for itself.¡±

Do you think these new self-healing material technology will be applied on Indian roads to permanently solve the problem of potholes? Let us know in the comments section below, and keep visiting Indiatimes.com for latest technology news.