Jan 12, 2012
Interview with Prof. Leyens
The science journal from MDR FIGARO broadcast on the 12.01.2012 an interview about Self-Healing Ceramics and Plastics. The research area is to be investigated in the DFG priority programme – Self Healing Materials, which was started by Prof. Christoph Leyens in collaboration with Prof. Schubert from the Friedrich-Schiller Universität in Jena, Prof. Peter Greil from the Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg and Prof. Sybrand van der Zwaag from the Technischen Universität Delft (www.spp1568.uni-jena.de).
From the interview: In accordance with the examples of nature, such as where the broken wing of a budgerigar grows together again and the rabbit bite in the bark of the apple tree heals, self healing should also occur in the future in metals, ceramics or plastics. Hartmut Schade spoke there about this with researchers from Jena and Dresden.
"What sounds relatively simple and plausible, is technically difficult to realise. We must teach our materials how they should do it, where and to which moment at particular points they must feed material in order to repair the damage" said Professor Christoph Leyens from the Institute for Materials Science of the TU Dresden.
The complete interview including audio version can be found at
www.mdr.de/mdr-figaro/journal/wissenschaftsjournal104.html