Instant insight: Self-healing at the nanoscale

Vincenzo Amendola and Moreno Meneghetti, at the University of Padova, Italy, take inspiration from nature to design materials that can repair themselves.

Nature uses self-healing in all living systems to repair damage caused by environmental interactions. A simple case is repairing a skin wound - without this mechanism, we could not live. DNA repair, which must occur routinely in every living organism, is another example. But at what level do repairing mechanisms occur? Looking at the components of a living system, we find cells, which typically have micrometre dimensions. But we have to zoom in further, namely to the nanoscale, to see the sub-cellular structures on which nature's self-healing mechanisms work. There we can see why natural systems are inspirations for the world of nanostructures.  More...

http://www.rsc.org/Publishing/ChemTech/Volume/2009/12/nanoscale.asp