9:36 a.m., May 18, 2009----A paper authored by Richard Wool, professor of chemical engineering at the University of Delaware, has been listed as one of the top three accessed of 2008 in Soft Matter, one of several journals published by the Royal Society of Chemistry.

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Soft Matter has a global circulation and an interdisciplinary audience, with a particular focus on the interface of physics, materials science, biology, chemical engineering, and chemistry.

Wool's paper, “Self-Healing Materials: A Review,” explores the ability of materials to self-heal from mechanical and thermally induced damage. In self-healing systems, there are transitions from hard to soft matter in ballistic impact and solvent bonding and, conversely, from soft to hard matter in high rate yielding materials and shear-thickening fluids used in liquid armor.

The paper examines these transitions in terms of Wool's new theory of the glass transition, the twinkling fractal theory (TFT), which quantitatively describes the nature and structure of the glass transition -- that is, from a liquid to a “solid”-- in amorphous materials.

“Success in the design of self-healing materials has important consequences for material safety, product performance, and enhanced fatigue lifetime,” Wool said.

In addition to his appointment in chemical engineering, Wool is an affiliated faculty member in UD's Center for Composite Materials.

Article by Diane Kukich