Ripped pants or a torn shirt usually means a trip to the tailor or a garbage can is in one's future. But scientists could be closing in on a new solution. They report in the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces a fabric coating made of squid proteins that allows rips in cotton, linen and wool to "heal" themselves.
Damage to a variety of surfaces, ranging from biomedical implants to clothing, can limit a product's usefulness. So for years scientists have been working on self-repairing films that could be placed onto products to boost their lifetimes. One approach has been to coat surfaces with multiple layers of polyelectrolytes of opposite charges.
