Smartphone screens will 'heal' their own cracks, researchers say

Dropping your smartphone often means living with a cracked screen until your next upgrade, or footing an expensive repair bill – but researchers have been busy bringing self-healing display technology closer to a practical reality.

A team from the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) has developed a self-healing electronic material that can repair its own cracks and other physical damage, and it has one secret ingredient: linseed oil.

Linseed oil is made from flax plant seeds, and these same seeds were adapted by the researchers in a similar way in order to add them to colourless polyimide (CPI) – an alternative to glass that's already finding uses in folding smartphone screens.

That added oil ingredient is able to seep into cracks made when the CPI is fractured, and – if the scientists are able to get it working reliably at scale, could mean screens that are able to bandage their own wounds after a smash.

"We were able to develop a self-healing, colourless polyimide that can radically solve the physical properties and lifespan of damaged polymer materials," say the researchers.