Nissan brings ‘self-healing’ paint to iPhone 4 users
This bit of news may seem a bit off-topic, but not really. What do Nissan automobiles and iPhone cases have in common? Well, pretty much nothing, until now at least.
For those of us iPhone users, we all appreciate the brilliant engineering that has come from Apple over in Pasadena, California in the world with iPhones. But we all dread the inevitable wear and tear that could be found on iPhones after being used…and dropped. And Nissan feels the pain, which is why they just introduced their own Scratch Shield iPhone case featuring the brand’s “self-healing paint finish.”
Beginning with Nissan’s paint technology, the brand has been employing their special paint jobs since 2005 on various Nissan and Infiniti models. Developed in conjunction with the University of Tokyo and Advanced Softmaterials Inc., the paint’s special ingredient is polyrotaxane. The beauty of that toxic sounding chemical is that when damage happens to the paint in the form of say, a fine scratch, the chemical structure of the paint “reacts” to the scratch and morphs its original shape to fill the gap, essentially “healing the blemish.”
“We like to think laterally by taking the great innovations we’ve got from an automotive point of view, and looking at how they could be applied to improve everyday issues,” said Bob Laishley, Overseas Programme Director in Business Development for Nissan in Europe. “The Scratch Shield iPhone case is a great example of us taking a Nissan automotive technology that has had a huge impact for our customers, and then shifting the boundaries to apply it to another everyday product.”
Nissan’s iPhone case is made of a combination of ABS and a tactile gel-like material to provide a more scratch-resistant surface and for better grip. The case is compatible with both iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S models. Product release details were not disclosed.
– By: Chris Chin
