Artificial flesh is almost close to being the real deal. Scientists in Australia have created a new material, a jelly-like one, and they say that it has the durability and strength of the actual skin, ligaments, and even bones. With what they’ve engineered in the hydrogel, it can actually repair itself after it has been broken, just like human skin can. This comes from chemist Luke Connal from the Australian National University.
Hydrogels are weak, but the material they’ve created is strong – so durable that it could actually lift heavy objects and can change its shape, just like human muscles do.
The fact that we have a jelly material with this kind of property is a massive deal for the development of the next-gen soft robotics and biomedical devices. By creating this kind of hydrogel, which has multiple functions, has been a challenge for scientists, even if they had the idea coming from actual jellyfish, Venus flytraps, and cucumbers.
New Kind of Artificial Flesh Was Created
While some of the hydrogels can support mechanical stress, others have self-healing properties, and some others have the ability to memories shapes or change colors. No one has been able to incorporate all of these functions into one gel. Not at the speed that they have achieved so far.
By putting their material through many tests, the authors of the study claim that they have created the first hydrogel, that’s resistant to fatigue, that’s strong, that’s self-healing and able to change shapes, which they can remember afterward. The advantage of using this kind of hydrogel is that they can lift heavy objects.
By using this material, researchers made thin films of flesh, without breaking them. When they were cooled or heated, they changed into different shapes, bending them into one way or another, before getting back to their original state and temperature.
