A Cracked Piece of Metal Self-Healed in Experiment That Stunned Scientists

upstart writes:

A Cracked Piece of Metal Self-Healed in Experiment That Stunned Scientists:

File this under 'That's not supposed to happen!'. In an experiment published in 2023, scientists observed a damaged section of metal healing itself. Though the repair was only on a nanoscale level, understanding the physics behind the process could inspire a whole new era of engineering.

A team from Sandia National Laboratories and Texas A&M University was testing the resilience of a small piece of platinum suspended in a vacuum using a specialized transmission electron microscope technique to pull the ends of the metal 200 times every second.

They then observed the self-healing at ultra-small scales in the 40-nanometer-thick wafer of metal.

Cracks caused by the kind of strain described above are known as fatigue damage: repeated stress and motion that causes microscopic breaks, eventually causing machines or structures to break.

Amazingly, after about 40 minutes of observation, the crack in the platinum started to fuse back together and mend itself before starting again in a different direction.

"This was absolutely stunning to watch first-hand," said materials scientist Brad Boyce from Sandia National Laboratories when the results were announced.

"We certainly weren't looking for it. What we have confirmed is that metals have their own intrinsic, natural ability to heal themselves, at least in the case of fatigue damage at the nanoscale."

These are exact conditions, and we don't know yet exactly how this is happening or how we can use it. However, if you think about the costs and effort required for repairing everything from bridges to engines to phones, there's no telling how much difference self-healing metals could make.

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