During my first and second year in the university, several of my friends knew me as that guy who required a miracle to use a phone for a semester. I was known to change phones about two to three times each semester. This isn't because I just loved throwing the money around, I was just never fortunate with phones. The first thing that got damaged in my phones was the screen. At a time, I had three phones whose screens were cracked.

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I know that I am not alone in this. Some of us are hopeless with phones. We probably do not beyond to this era. There are some of us who place our phones in our back pockets and unknowingly sit down, breaking the screen in the process. Some of us are just clumsy, resulting in our phones slipping out of our hands almost every time, resulting in cracked screens.

Fixing screens is not always easy and sometimes, the price for fixing a cracked screen makes one consider just getting a new phone. However, I come bearing good news. There is hope in the horizon. Think of a situation whereby you place your phone in your back pocket and sit down, thereby cracking the screen. Normally, you'd feel dejected but imagine a situation where that screen fixes itself within a few minutes.

Some people might say that this is not news as there are some phones that sort of possess that ability in a way. However, what I am talking about here is absolutely different. I am taling about "Polyether-thioureas".

A Japanese graduate student, Yu Yanagisawa was working on making polyether-thioureas into a glue when he made an astonishing discovery. When compressed manually, seperated pieces of this polymer came together to form a single sheet.

What makes Polyether-thioureas much better than several other self-repairing polymers is that it requires little heat. If pressure is applied, polyether-thioureas will bond together, even at room temperature. This differentiates it from several other self-healing polymers which can require temperatures that exceed 100 degrees Celsius to repair themselves.

I don't see this being useful in just phone screens. Imagine cars that can heal themselves. Here in Nigeria, it is not uncommon to visit your local mechanic's shop and see several vehicles that have apparently being condemned. When made out of self repairing parts, vehicles could walk out of accidents as if nothing ever happened. The need for the replacement of vehicle parts is greatly reduced as they will surely repair themselves.

And have you thought of our environment? There are waste materials almost everywhere you look. With the removal of the need to constantly repair things, the re is a reduction in the amount of junk that is generated, resulting in a cleaner world for us.

The polymer polyether-thioureas is still being studied so as to ascertain it's potentials but I think it could really change the world as we know it.

FURTHER READING

• https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/dec/18/smashed-cracked-phone-screen-self-healing-glass-university-of-tokyo
• https://www.engadget.com/2017/12/18/new-polymer-could-make-phone-screen-repairs-past/

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Thank you for sparing your time to go through this. I remain your humble little boy.

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I am @Illuminatus, I am a Nigerian and I am neither a terrorist, a scammer nor a spammer.

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GIF made by @foundation

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