Shattering a glass is always cumbersome not only because of the object we lose, but also because of how difficult it is to clean up the mess afterwards and how dangerous it is to have little crystals left around with which to end up cutting ourselves. But, can you imagine how comfortable it would be to be able to repair a broken glass in a window, your computer screen or your smartphone just by pressing on it with your finger?
This is not yet possible and it seems that it will take some time to make it happen; However, the discovery made in 2017 by the chemical researcher at the University of Tokyo Yu Yanagisawa , opened the doors to investigate in this direction and that, perhaps, one day, we can save a lot of money on glass repair.
Almost by chance, while researching adhesives that can be used on wet surfaces, Yanagisawa came up with a type of glass that had the ability to self-regenerate in just thirty seconds , which could mean tripling the life of many of our everyday products. in the future if we were to manufacture them with this material. It works almost as if it were joining pieces of plasticine.
The secret is in the “thiourea”
Organic glass, made from a substance called polyether thioureas , is more like acrylic than mineral glass, which is used for tableware and smartphone screens. The secret is in thiourea , an organic sulfur compound that uses hydrogen bonding to make the edges of broken glass self-adhesive, as the Japanese study showed.
These properties had already been demonstrated before with some materials such as rubber or gel, but never before had they been reproduced in a material such as glass or glass. Yanagisawa himself celebrated that this means opening the way to be able to make safer and more durable objects , made with this type of resin glass. How much money can we end up saving by never having to change the mobile screen again?
