Credit: Pengfei Cao and Bingrui Li/Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Dept. of Energy
Rubbery segments in a ribbon-shaped polymer membrane make it super-stretchy. Hydrogen-bonding molecules, shown as yellow and green spheres, allow the material to self-heal after a cut or break and recover its ability to separate gases such as carbon dioxide, shown as red and black spheres, from nitrogen, depicted as blue spheres.