Futurehead.com

University of Illinois engineers have developed a self-healing system that restores electrical conductivity to a cracked circuit in microseconds.

“It simplifies the system,” said chemistry professor Jeffrey Moore, a co-author of the paper. “Rather than having to build in redundancies or to build in a sensory diagnostics system, this material is designed to take care of the problem itself.”

As electronic devices are evolving to perform more sophisticated tasks, manufacturers are packing as much density onto a chip as possible. However, such density compounds reliability problems, such as failure stemming from fluctuating temperature cycles as the device operates or fatigue. A failure at any point in the circuit can shut down the whole device.

“In general, there’s not much avenue for manual repair,” Sottos said. “Sometimes you just can’t get to the inside. In a multilayer integrated circuit, or battery, there’s no opening it up. Normally you just replace the whole chip or battery.”

Most consumer devices are meant to be replaced with some frequency, adding to electronic waste issues, but in many important applications — such as instruments or vehicles for space or military functions — electrical failures cannot be replaced or repaired.

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