Every time someone buys a new car/vehicle, they are overprotective about scratches. It is because once a car has scratches on its surface, it is impossible to heal it. Mechanics surely try their best to minimize the damage, but it is never close to the original color scheme. But scientists have now developed a new self-healing coating that will auto-heal the scratches on your vehicle.
As phony as it may sound, the coating actually works. Some might question its authenticity but the team of scientists at the Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology has successfully developed and demonstrated its effectiveness.
How does the self-healing coating work?
The research team of Dr. Jin Chul Kim, Dr. Young il Park, and Dr. Ji-Eun Jeong created the self-healing coating which is both durable and can heal by exposing the vehicle to sunlight. They use transparent organic photothermal dyes which are relatively cheaper and do not alter the color of the vehicle.
You may wonder what transparency has to do with a scratch-resistant coating material. All the existing commercial resin solutions have their own color. But the new organic photothermal dye material is transparent. So, when the coating heals, it doesn’t create a color mismatch on the spot. It is very hard to distinguish and is almost like nothing was done to remove the scratches.
According to Eurekalert, “To the existing commercial coating resin, the research team added a dynamic chemical bond(Hindered urea structure) that can repeat the decomposition and recombination of the polymer structure and mixed it with a transparent photothermal dye so that dynamic chemical bonding can occur actively upon exposure to sunlight.”
The research team demonstrated the new scratch solution in action with a small-sized model. They scratched the surface of the car which was coated with the newly developed material. After directing UV light using a lens, the scratches on the top surface healed within seconds. In the real-world application, the coating could take up to 30 minutes to self-heal after the vehicle is placed under direct sunlight.
You may be curious to buy it but it is sadly just a demonstration and will take some time before a product is available in the market. But it will be possible to make your vehicle scratch-proof in the future.
