Israeli researchers chance upon new type of glass that can fix its own cracks
By dropping peptide powder in water, Tel Aviv University-led team says it developed a material that is easier to make, more durable and more transparent than conventional glass
Reporter at The Times of Israel
Researchers from Tel Aviv University say they have invented a new way to make glass in their lab that is easier to manufacture than regular glass, can fix itself and could open the door — ahem, window — to a range of scientific and technological advances.
The glass was discovered by Gal Finkelstein-Zuta, a PhD student who was experimenting with peptides when she dropped some peptide powder into water. It dissolved, she told The Times of Israel, “like making Kool-Aid.”
But the next day, after the water evaporated, Finkelstein-Zuta was surprised to discover that glass had formed “spontaneously.”
Working in the lab of Prof. Ehud Gazit’s lab at Tel Aviv’s biomedicine and material sciences schools and with other researchers in Israel and around the world, she found the glass was “self-healing” — able to repair its cracks. It is adhesive and can glue together pieces of glass. It is also more transparent than ordinary glass so it can transmit a wider range of light waves.
Researchers say the discovery could simplify the manufacturing of glass used in an array of technologies from lenses to satellite communications, according to the school.
The results of the research were published last week in the prestigious peer-reviewed scientific journal Nature.
Conventional glass is produced from raw materials such as sand and limestone that are melted together at a very high temperature and then cooled rapidly.
But for the new glass, no heat or pressure are needed, just peptides and room-temperature water.
Peptides are an organic chain of amino acids, considered the “building blocks of proteins,” Finkelstein-Zuta said. “You can think of amino acids as beads and peptides as the necklace.”
By varying the amounts of water, the researchers found they can modify the curvature of the glass without grinding and polishing, a process that might make the manufacturing of optical lenses easier.
The glass can crack, as glass does. But when water is added to its surface, the glass can repair itself.
That’s the good news, she said. The bad news is that the glass still needs to be in lab-controlled conditions for it to maintain its shape.
“You can’t yet use the glass to drink water because the glass will melt in your hand,” she said.
Glass has been found dating back to about 2,500 BCE. This new peptide glass is still in the early stages of its development and not yet ready for commercial use.
But researchers think it may one day have a wide range of applications, including in technologies involving satellites, remote sensing, communications and optics.
“We opened a new field that might be the basis for other glass materials,” Finkelstein-Zuta said.
