regenerative plastic..

You know how every action movie has that moment where the hero gets beat up, then magically heals and comes back stronger?

August 19, 2025

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Okay so this sounds completely ridiculous at first.

Solar panels... that work indoors? With just your ceiling lights?

But I read this UCL study and now I'm questioning why we never thought of this before.

These researchers created perovskite solar cells that can actually power devices using nothing but your desk lamp or overhead lights.

And ofc, these aren’t your typical silicon panels. These are made from a material that can be tuned to absorb the specific wavelengths coming from your light bulbs.

BUT

Normal perovskite crystals have tiny defects called "traps" where electrons get stuck instead of flowing as electricity.

So they added rubidium chloride to help the crystals grow more evenly, reducing these traps. Then they threw in two other chemicals to prevent the crystal structure from breaking apart over time.

This got them 37.6% efficiency converting indoor light to electricity.
That's six times better than anything currently available.

Your wireless keyboard, remote controls, sensors, all could ditch batteries forever.

Imagine never having to change the batteries in your TV remote again.

Honestly, with my solar setup at home and this tech, I might actually start selling electricity back to the grid 😂

As you would have understood in the last edition, I’ve become caring to the environment lately (if any of you want to gift me an EV, I’m just an email away :))

And paper mills which make paper (sorry no joke here), are usually left with this woody waste called lignin that usually just gets thrown away. 

FSU researchers are now turning this into plastic… (and this should be worse for the environment, but wait for it)

Traditional plastic production uses these toxic chemicals called isocyanates. This new method completely skips them by mixing lignin with carbon dioxide to create polyurethane.

Here's the part that blew my mind: instead of producing CO2 (like normal plastic manufacturing), this process actually consumes CO2 from the atmosphere.

Plus the plastic is biodegradable and made from renewable waste.

The resulting material is just as strong and heat-resistant as conventional plastic but dissolves easily for manufacturing.

It's literally turning pollution and waste into useful materials.

Paper mills everywhere just became potential plastic factories. Who saw that coming? 👀

If any of you have had kidney stones. You know how painful it gets.

Surgery is sometimes the only option for big ones.

University of Waterloo researchers built a tiny robot that swims to kidney stones and dissolves them.

The "robot" is actually a 12mm flexible strip made of hydrogel loaded with an enzyme called urease, with a tiny magnet at one end. 



Doctors insert it through a catheter, then use an external magnetic arm to steer it through your urinary tract like a remote-controlled submarine.

Once it reaches the kidney stone, the robot releases urease into the surrounding urine, which increases the pH and makes the stone dissolve. 

In tests, stones lost 30% of their weight in five days, making them easy to pass naturally.

The robot can be held in place for days using a magnetic patch on your skin, then passes out naturally when it's done.

I hope these robots don’t do anything else while inside us 😅

You know how every action movie has that moment where the hero gets beat up, then magically heals and comes back stronger?

Well, some wizards at Texas A&M University just made that happen.

In real life. With plastic.

But it’s not called “plastic”.

It’s ATSP (Aromatic Thermosetting Copolyester).

Let’s just call it plastic that laughs in the face of everything we know about materials science.

The problem nobody wanted to solve

Here's the thing about traditional materials. They break. 

Then you need to throw them away and buy new ones. Let’s look at our existing options:

Steel? Strong but heavy.

Aluminum? Light but not strong enough.

Carbon fiber? Both strong and light but costs a bomb. And of course it can't fix itself when it cracks.

For aerospace and automotive engineers, this creates a nightmare scenario.

One tiny crack in a critical component could mean scrapping an entire million-dollar aircraft part.

Professor Mohammad Naraghi wanted to build something which solves all these problems…together!

A breakthrough that breaks all the rules

When you heat ATSP to about 320°F (or 160 degree celsius)

The material literally remembers its original shape and heals any cracks or damage.

We're talking about a plastic that's several times stronger than steel, lighter than aluminum, AND can repair itself like biological tissue.

How? "bond-exchange chemistry." 

Translation: Molecular-level Lego blocks that can disconnect, move around, and reconnect in new patterns when heated.

And if you are still not amused…the material often becomes STRONGER than it was originally. 

Testing it to perfection!

The research team put this stuff through absolute torture tests. 

They stretched it, cracked it, heated it, and repeated the process hundreds of times.

In one experiment, they damaged samples and then heated them to 536°F. After two full damage-healing cycles, the material returned to nearly full strength.

By the fifth cycle, healing efficiency dropped to about 80% (probably because even super-plastic gets tired eventually), but the chemical stability stayed rock solid.

What makes this discovery special

It’s not just being published in an academic paper.

The US Department of Defense is funding this too. 

And when the military gets excited about plastic, you know something big is happening…

Imagine an aircraft that can heal battle damage mid-flight.
Or space stations that repair themselves when hit by micrometeorites. 

Or cars that automatically fix minor collision damage and protect passengers better in crashes.

Plus, since ATSP is fully recyclable, it could help solve the plastic waste problem.

You can crush it, remold it, and reshape it multiple times without the chemistry breaking down.

We just entered the era of materials that evolve and adapt.

Batman would be proud and probably a little jealous.

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