Graphene That Changes Color When It Cracks Could

Literally Save Lives

futurism.com/graphene-that-changes-color-when-it-cracks-could-literally-save-lives

Christianna Reedy

A Natural Remedy
Since it’s discovery, graphene has been changing our society dramatically. The radically
versatile material can filter sea water while also beating steel in tensile strength over 200
times. Now, the material might just save lives by revolutionizing the maintenance of
infrastructure.

A team of researchers at the Leibniz Institute of Polymer Research in Germany have

developed a graphene coating can signal inspectors about potential damage with a
simple color change. The team published their results in the journal Material Horizons,
elaborating on the development and potential applications of the graphene revelation.

The researchers took a close look at nature when approaching their experiments. Taking
cues from fish scales and the inner shell of mussels, physicists decided to manipulate the
arrangement of molecular structures to reflect light. Rather than following the common
practice of adding pigments that only absorb or reflect light, the scientists designed the
coating so it can amplify certain wavelengths of reflected light while dulling others.

They placed graphene flakes at particular angles that, if compromised, would bounce
light back in a different direction that the other, uniform flakes, thereby emitting an
alternate colors of red, yellow, and green. This opens up a host of possibilities when it
comes to applications.

A Better Standard of Safety

Much of the technology involving transportation requires a complex array of man-made
structures coming together to build a cohesive unit. More often than not, it’s difficult to
locate damage in the structural integrity of things like bridges and airplanes, meaning
that minute flaws could pose great threats that can abruptly lead to failure. With the new
coating, inspectors can easily detect a color change that is proportional to the severity of
the flaw.

Other applications of this material could be for coating wings of airplanes to indicate
stress fractures. The safety material may be even more handy for a structure like the
new space station. Sending detection equipment into space is extremely costly, so simply
applying a thin graphene coating to equipment that would allow for astronauts to
pinpoint fractures with just a visual inspection could potentially help space agencies
conserve their resources.

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But before we implement the new coating technique, more testing is needed to
determine whether the coating material can stand up to conditions in the real world.

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