A team of engineers at the University of Illionis has developed an autonomous system that restores electrical conductivity to a cracked circuit in less than seconds.
In electronics, if a circuit breaks or a tiny failure occurs for a reason within an integrated chip, the entire chip or the device becomes useless. In order to save one on such occasions, a team of engineers at the University of Illionis has developed an autonomous restorative circuit system. It is a self-healing system that restores electrical conductivity to a cracked circuit rapidly.The process is so quick that even the user cannot recognise the failure in the circuit.
The system uses tiny micro-capsules-–-as small as 10 microns in diameter--filled with gallium-indium liquid metal, which are dispersed on top of a gold line functioning as a circuit.The micro-capsules break open when a crack starts and then they release the metallic liquid into the gaps in the circuit. This restores the electrical flow after a period of downtime which lasts only a few microseconds.
Jeffrey Mooren, a chemistry professor,said,“It simplifies the system. 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.”
Even with a small amount of micro-capsules, researchers were able to heal 99 per cent of original conductivity in 90 per cent of their samples.
Apart from being autonomous, the self-healing system is also localised. It implies that only those micro-capsules open that are intercepted by a crack. This ensures that repair takes place only at the point of damage. This system does not require any human intervention. It is well suited for applications where accessing a break for repair is impossible, such as a battery, or finding the source of a failure is difficult, such as an aircraft or spacecraft, state the engineers.
Nancy Sottos, professor, said, “In an aircraft, especially a defence-based aircraft, there are miles and miles of conductive wire. You don’t often know where the break occurs. The autonomous part is nice--it knows where it broke, even if we don’t.”
The team of engineers at Illinois has plans to further develop the technology in order to improve the safety and longevity of batteries. They are also looking at the research to explore other possibilities for using micro-capsules to control conductivity.
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