LG recently announced its first curved flexible screen smartphone - G Flex, which is very eye-catching, especially the official function of "automatically repairing small scratches on the back". Since you are interested, please join me to explore the principles of this technology.
Nissan Automobile Company believes that you are familiar with it, but you may have heard little about Nissan's car surface paint repair technology. Listen to the small story: car lovers probably know that after painting the car body, they must spray another layer of car varnish to protect their car. In fact, that varnish is what we usually call protective paint, but the varnish used for automobiles is a kind of paint that is thick and has a high degree of hardening. But even with the paint of this degree of protection, daily car washing and slight scraping in the machine room will still scratch the surface varnish, leaving ugly scratches. In order to solve this problem, Nissan and the paint company (it seems to be Nippon Paint Company, but there is too little information to be sure) jointly developed a protective paint called Scratch Shield, which is the so-called "scratch auto repair baking paint". This kind of paint is also sprayed on the car paint like protective varnish, and is baked at high temperature. After the car is sprayed with this kind of paint, it can automatically repair small scratches over a period of time. The principle is to change the molecular structure of the protective paint on the outermost layer of the automobile paint, so that it can have higher flexibility, similar to the "elasticity" of plastics, in addition to the function of hard protection. As long as the protective paint is not subject to serious penetrating damage (that is, it does not damage the automobile paint), Then this special protective paint can show "elasticity" under the change of higher temperature, and automatically repair the scratches generated previously. The higher the temperature, the faster the automatic repair speed.
Sketch map of automatic repair and baking of scratches. After the outer protective paint is scratched, there will be a sunken scratch. The high-density and high elastic protective paint can extend its elasticity under high temperature, allowing the sunken place to slowly bulge to fill the scratch.
The following is a demonstration example of Nissan's promotion of automatic repair paint:
The black plate in the figure is the part with "automatic repair baking paint", and the steel plate next door is not coated with any protective paint. After simulating scratches, we can see that there are very obvious scratches on the black plate.
The scratch was quickly repaired after the staff was drenched with high temperature hot water (the higher the temperature, the faster the repair speed).
This automatic repair baking paint can significantly reduce the small scratches on the car. Of course, if the scratches are too heavy, even if the repair baking paint is completely scraped off, it cannot be repaired. Interestingly, Nissan has licensed this technology to NTT DoCoMo (a Japanese communication operator) in 2009, but I have never seen DoCoMo launch this type of mobile phone in my impression.
In addition, Marek Uben of the University of South Mississippi in the United States has also invented an automatic repair coating, which is more advanced in technology than the one above.
This is a polyimide coating, a material used for plastics, foams and films. This material contains chitosan, which is an organic compound from crab shells, lobster shells, shrimp shells and an organic compound called oxyheterocyclic butane. When the coating is scratched, the ring of oxyheterocyclic butane will be destroyed and the active part of chemical reaction will be exposed. Ultraviolet light will explode chitosan molecules, and another reactive site will be exposed. Oxybutane and chitosan attract each other, bond and close scratches. This material may be used to make car paint, or plastic transparent coating of screen, glasses or dial. The repair speed depends on the time and intensity of sunlight. That is to say, the higher the temperature and the longer the ultraviolet radiation time of the repair coating, the faster the repair speed.
How self-healing coatings work.
Among the above two kinds of automatic repair coatings, Xiao Bian believes that Nissan's automatic repair baking paint is an automatic repair coating applied to LG G Flex. After all, this kind of baking paint is relatively mature in technology and easy to apply to mobile phones. Of course, this is just my guess. The truth can only be determined after seeing the relevant official information.
In fact, this type of automatic repair technology is nothing new. Nissan has equipped many high-end cars with automatic repair paint baking technology several years ago. But it should be the first time to apply it to mobile phones. Under the constant confrontation between the hardware war and the software war of major mobile phone manufacturers, some mobile phone manufacturers can still focus on mobile phone process design and continue to innovate. I think this is a good thing. Compared with the constantly upgraded hardware and software, the better manufacturing process and design make it easier to feel the vitality of this mobile phone.
