Someday, chemically protective suits made of fabric coated in self-healing, thin films may prevent farmers from exposure to organophosphate pesticides, soldiers from chemical or biological attacks in the field and factory workers from accidental releases of toxic materials, according to a team of researchers from Pennsylvania State University. They're looking for a way to make fabrics self-healing using conventional textiles, eventually coming up with unique coating technology. The procedure is simple. The material to be coated is dipped in a series of liquids to create layers of material to form a self-healing, polyelectrolyte layer-by-layer coating. This coating is deposited "under ambient conditions in safe solvents, such as water, at low cost using simple equipment amenable to scale-up, the researchers report. Polyelectrolyte coatings are made up of positively and negatively charged polymers, in this case polymers like those in squid ring teeth proteins. During the layering, enzymes can be incorporated into the coating. The researchers used urease—the enzyme that breaks urea into ammonia and carbon dioxide—but in commercial use, the coating would be tailored with enzymes matched to the chemical being targeted. http://phys.org/news/2016-07-self-healing-textiles-neutralize-chemicals.html
