Scott R. White’s Self-Healing Circuits

Scott R. White has an unusual distinction for a scientist: His work has inspired jokes on late-night TV. Researchers “have developed a plastic that repairs itself,” said Jay Leno during a monologue in February 2001. “If it cracks or breaks, it automatically mends itself. … That means Cher could finally achieve immortality.”

“I found it hilarious,” says White, a professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. At the time of Leno’s crack, he and his colleague Nancy R. Sottos had just published a paper detailing how to create self-healing materials, like paint that instantly repairs scratches and dings. In December 2011, he announced that his lab had successfully applied the same idea to electronic circuits. That could be a big deal: “Semiconductor factories yield 80 percent good product at the end of the fabrication process,” says Risto J. Puhakka, president of VLSI Research, a semiconductor market research company. “A 1 percent improvement would have a big financial impact.”