Self-healing polymers – it's not magic, it's chemistry
175 minutes for chemistry
Howard Colquhoun at the University of Reading recounts his experiences promoting his cutting edge research to an eager public at the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition
In the summer of 2014 my PhD student Kate Lim mentioned to me that she had just been to the Royal Society Summer Exhibition in London, and that she thought it was a really great way for scientists to get their research in front of the public. Well, that would be one way of putting it. What she actually said was "We could do that!"
In fact, thinking about it later, our work on self-healing polymeric materials did seem like something a lot of people might be interested in, and we managed to persuade my colleague and collaborator in this field, Wayne Hayes, and his collaborator Clive Siviour in the Oxford University Engineering Department to go along with the idea. Our subsequent joint proposal to the Royal Society for an exhibit at their 2015 exhibition, to be called "Materials that Repair Themselves", was accepted as one of only two chemistry exhibits that year. We were then faced with the problems of designing, building, and of course funding the exhibit. In the end, the Universities of Reading and Oxford put up most of the money, and colleagues from industry generously loaned us various items to enhance our exhibition stand. These included the front end of an only slightly damaged Formula 1 car, built from high-performance composite materials, and an ultra-high-speed camera that showed how materials fail in real time. Visitors could puncture a balloon and then watch the details of their balloon imploding in very..... slow..... motion.
Polymers on film
Ahead of the exhibition, we put together a three-minute film about our research as part of the Royal Society's online publicity material. The film was presented by Ben Littlefield, our Science Outreach Coordinator, and was professionally produced in Reading and Oxford. Short sections of this film were also kindly contributed by our collaborator Stuart Rowan at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio.
Colleagues in the Events Department at Reading, notably Ellie Gotay, helped us design the actual stand, which took the form of a backdrop showing a chemistry research lab, with exhibition tables and computer displays in front. One computer showed continuous molecular simulations of polymer chains breaking apart from one another and then re-assembling through hydrogen bonding and π-π-stacking. This reflected the actual mechanisms by which are own recently-published materials repaired themselves after mechanical damage. Samples of a new commercial polymer of this type were also exhibited, and we delighted in slicing through samples of this material with special cutters and handing the pieces to our visitors. They would then watch in disbelief as the fragments in their hands grew back together again. "It's not magic" we would say, "it's chemistry".
We used classical molecular models to show how the basic polymer molecules were constructed and how they interacted with one another. However, to illustrate one of the key mechanisms behind polymer self-healing, Kate also built a special set of models using polystyrene spheres and carefully-positioned Velcro patches to simulate hydrogen bonds. When the initially-separated "molecules" were shaken together (simulating random thermal motion) in a large polyethylene box, they reversibly assembled into a flexible, coherent mass – a visual simulation of polymer self-repair.
Reaching a wide audience
The exhibition ran for seven days in early July 2015. It was the hottest July week on record, and more than 2000 visitors a day piled through the doors of the Royal Society in Carlton House Terrace. We were able to explain and demonstrate our story to nearly all these visitors, who ranged from madly keen schoolchildren, to enthusiastic adults, unexpected experts ("I used to work for NASA") and passing Fellows of the Royal Society. Exhibitors on the stand from Reading were: Professors Howard Colquhoun and Wayne Hayes; Drs Ben Littlefield, Lewis Hart and Antonio Feula; research students Kate Lim, Corinne McEwan, Ben Baker and Tahkur Singh Babra; and events organiser Ellie Gotay. Exhibitors from Oxford were: Professor Clive Siviour; Dr Xuegang Tang and research students Heather Wilson and Sung-Ho Yoon.
In order to preserve our voices – and our sanity – Kate had to run a military-style operation, with four or five staff and research students manning the stand at any one time and being relieved at half-day intervals by incoming teams from Reading and Oxford. The afternoon teams would stay overnight in a student hall in Bloomsbury before taking on the next morning shift and being relieved in their turn at lunchtime. It was exhausting but massively enjoyable work, and we all felt afterwards that we had made a real contribution to public engagement with the science of advanced materials. Several visitors subsequently contacted us to ask for lectures, magazine articles, television and newspaper interviews (all of which were duly provided), and a year after the event we are still getting hits on our exhibition Facebook and Twitter pages.
175 minutes for chemistry
As the oldest chemical society in the world, we celebrated our 175th anniversary in 2016. We wanted to mark this milestone by recognising the important contributions our community makes to the chemical sciences. We asked our members and supporters to dedicate 175 minutes to chemistry in 2016 and share their stories with us. We featured these stories throughout the year on our website, in print in RSC News, and on social media using #time4chem.
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