Credit: Image courtesy of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Special sequence-defined polymers referred to as peptoids can be assembled into two-dimensional membranes (a schematic of the molecular structure and packing is in Fig. a/b). The microscopy image (Fig. c) shows the well-aligned molecular rows in the membrane films. In situ atomic force microscopy was used to investigate the self-repair of the membrane — beginning with the undamaged membrane (Fig. d), the damaged membrane (Fig. e), and the self-repair, resulting in an undamaged membrane (Fig. g) only 37 minutes after the initial damage.