With campsites getting increasingly crowded, more grey nomads are choosing to get off the beaten track and onto the unbeaten, potholed, corrugated, and sometimes bushy track.
And that can only mean one thing … a scratched, scraped, and sorry-looking rig.
But off-road adventurers who are getting sick and tired of seeing their former pride joy looking significantly the worse for wear … and don’t have the budget for endless respray jobs … now have a glimmer of hope.
A team of researchers in South Korea have developed a transparent protective coating that ‘self-heals’ scratches in 30 minutes when exposed to sunlight.
Will annoying vehicle scratches soon be self healing? PIC: Cizza
The material is remarkable in that it has achieved the ‘impossible dream’ of offering high durability at the same time as being transparent and strong ‘self-healing’ properties.
The team from the Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology tested their brainchild by coating a laboratory-scale model using a spray-coating machine. When the model car was exposed to midday sunlight for about 30 minutes, the scratch completely disappeared and the surface of the coating material was restored.
The ‘magic’ is explained like this.
When sunlight is absorbed by the developed material, the surface temperature rises as light energy is converted into thermal energy. The increased surface temperature breaks apart the chemical bonds in the polymer structure and they then reform again, effectively self-healing a surface scratch.
Although self-healing functions using photothermal dyes have been studied, previous studies were mainly based on inorganic materials that are difficult to apply industrially as the coating material should be transparent.
In addition, inorganic materials require a large amount of light energy to produce a photothermal effect.
The Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology says that the material’s transparency and its affordability were its other big advantages.
“The developed technology is a platform technology that synthesises self-healing coating materials using both inexpensive commercial polymer materials and photothermal dyes,” said the Institute’s Dr Jin Chul Kim. “It is expected to be widely used not only in automotive clearcoats but also in various applications.”
Do you get scratches ‘fixed’ … or just learn to live with them? Email us here to share your thoughts
