The healing abilities of living organisms allow them to repair and maintain themselves so they might function at full potential. What if this type of technology could be implemented into a faulty part of a machine - University of Dayton Research Institute chemist Bob Kauffman happened upon a way to do just that.

When working at UDRI, Kauffman undertook a project to determine the cause of a catastrophic failure that caused the crash of TWA Flight 800. Research showed that frayed fuel sensor wiring likely played a large part in the crash. When frayed fuel lines are exposed to moisture and fuel residue near fuel tanks it can cause ignition and even explosion. However, wires of this kind are in airplanes all over the world and this kind of fraying is notoriously difficult to detect and repair.

"You don't want to be taking apart bundles of wire just to look for a couple of hairline cracks," Kauffman said. "You can do a lot more damage to good wires trying to find and fix a bad one."

Kauffman's inspiration for a solution came, as many great ideas do, by accident.

"I was conducting experiments in the lab to recreate the scenario that most likely caused the TWA fuel tank explosion, and a baseball game was playing on a radio in the background," Kauffman said. "Every time I put a drop of water on live copper wires, the game went away. It just went to static. I realized that wet copper wires give off a radio frequency just before shorting out."

The wires were emitting a radio frequency just as they shorted out, this phenomenon led to the realization that a fairly simple listening device could be made to find such malfunctioning wires.

This innovation allowed Kauffman to come up with his revolutionary idea, Power-Activated Technology for Coating and Healing or PATCH, for short. The formula draws upon the same elements that make these frayed wires dangerous and instead, keeps them safe.

The product comes in two forms, liquid and solid, and is inexpensive and nontoxic. The liquid can be sprayed on bundles of wires that may have been damaged over time.

"If it comes into contact with any live wire with damaged insulation, the electrical current will transform the spray into an insoluble polymer coating," Kauffman said. "Any solution not coming into contact with exposed wire will wash away, preventing weight build-up from repair activity."

The solid form can be put on newly manufactured wires to prevent future damage.

Kauffman's developments have led to an extra $200,000 in funding to research PATCH and other devices that could be placed near wires to monitor them for malfunctions. Kaufman believes that his invention could have other purposes as well.

"With the ever-increasing amount of wiring being used in cars and trucks comes an increased number of intermittent electrical problems from frayed wiring," Kauffman said. "If those wires can't be easily located visually, they could be detected using a spray of water to cause them to produce radio frequencies - then repaired with self-healing spray."