Microcapsules in the gold circuit released liquid metal in response to damage, swiftly restoring electrical conductivity, and bringing self-repairing electronic chips a step closer.

BBC: Time to heal: The materials that repair themselves

The result is that any coating, such as an antibacterial layer, would be "self-repairing" after small amounts of damage, as the molecular chains just below the damaged layer re-cover the surface.

BBC: Coating heals itself after damage

The fix, according to a team at MIT, is self-assembling (and therefore self-repairing) solar cells made up of a synthetic molecular soup containing phospholipids that, when mixed with a solution, attach themselves to a series of carbon nanotubes for alignment.

ENGADGET: Self-repairing solar cells could also fix our energy dependency

Kyle Wiens is the co-founder and CEO of iFixit, whose Web site you might have visited to read its funny and geekily-detailed teardowns of new gadgets, to download instructions for self-repairing that iPhone you dropped into the toilet, I mean, bathtub, or to buy screens and screwdrivers for the aforementioned repairs.

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