Liquid magic: Self-healing glasses from porous liquids

Have you ever wished that your broken or scratched phone glass cover could magically fix itself? We will attempt to make this a reality by combining a recently discovered type of porous liquids with network forming glasses. This will produce a transparent and fully functional glass where material is allowed to flow to damaged regions and repair them, leading to true self-healing glasses. There have been successful attempts to create self-healing metallic and polymeric materials, but it has so far been unsuccessful for glasses that are prone to cracking and breaking. If successful, this new technology will significantly expand the lifetime, reliability, and sustainability of glass materials. Inspired by how biological materials repair themselves in nature, this could lead to a world where glass materials can repair themselves instead of the need for replacement.