Originally published 2020-03-03.
Can a road fix itself when it rains? That was the idea behind Paflec, a pavement proposed by Mexican engineering student Israel Antonio Briseño Carmona. Made largely from rubber recovered from scrap tyres, it was designed so that rainwater, normally the enemy of road surfaces, would trigger a chemical reaction that helps close up damage. The project won the national round of the James Dyson Award in Mexico in 2019. It is a promising prototype, not yet a road you can drive on, and the difference between those two things is the most useful part of the story.
Who invented the self-repairing rubber pavement
Briseño studied civil engineering at the Universidad Autónoma de Coahuila (Autonomous University of Coahuila) and worked on the project in Torreón, in northern Mexico. His motivation was local and very visible: after heavy rain, the streets of his city kept breaking up, and potholes appeared faster than crews could fill them.
He began in 2018 with an asphalt-based mix, then reformulated it around recycled tyre rubber, which he saw as both cheaper and more sustainable. He has said he took inspiration from self-healing concrete, which uses dormant bacteria to seal cracks, although his own material uses no bacteria at all. Reports from the time say he registered the invention under the name Paflec in April 2019; the patent status could not be independently confirmed.
(The Facebook post originally embedded here is no longer available.)
How the pavement is meant to repair itself
According to the project description on the James Dyson Award website, the rubber from discarded tyres is combined with additives at high temperature, using essentially the same production process as ordinary asphalt. The rubber and additives together form a putty-like matrix. When water reaches that material, it reacts to form calcium silicates, compounds that also help give cement its strength. Those new compounds are what allow the pavement to recover some of its structure after cracking.
In other words, the design tries to turn the main cause of damage into the trigger for repair. In conventional roads, rainwater seeps through small cracks into the base layers, weakens them and leads to sinking and potholes. Paflec was meant to respond to the same water by partially healing.
To test the concept, Briseño made specimens following AASHTO standards, the American highway testing norms widely used in Mexico, and ran indirect tensile and Marshall stability tests. Samples were broken in a press, soaked in water and tested again to see how much strength they regained.
Why potholes are such an expensive problem
Water is the classic road killer. It weakens the layers under the surface, and in colder climates freeze-thaw cycles widen cracks further. Each pass of a heavy vehicle then flexes the weakened spot until the surface breaks away. Repairs are slow, disruptive and expensive, and patched roads often fail again within a season.
The Dyson Award entry notes that roughly 80 percent of paved roads in Mexico are asphalt, with most of the rest in hydraulic concrete. That makes any improvement to asphalt-type surfaces potentially valuable. Early news coverage claimed the invention could save governments billions of dollars, but that figure was never backed by a published cost study, and it should be treated as a hope rather than a result.
The James Dyson Award, and where Paflec fit in
The James Dyson Award is an international design competition run by the James Dyson Foundation for university students and recent graduates. Each participating country picks a national winner, and a global winner is chosen from the shortlist. Briseño’s pavement was Mexico’s national winner in 2019. The international winner that year was MarinaTex, a compostable plastic alternative made from fish-processing waste, designed by British student Lucy Hughes.
A national prize comes with modest funding and, more importantly, attention. Mexican media covered the story enthusiastically, while noting that the material was not yet ready for real roads.
#Ciencia Mexicano crea pavimento que se repara con agua. Israel Antonio Briseño, egresado de la Universidad Autónoma de Coahuila, ganó el concurso James Dyson-México. Hecho a base de neumáticos y con resultados satisfactorios todavía no está listo para su implementación. pic.twitter.com/6M8epm7lFC
— Enfoque Informativo (@enfoqueinforma) October 22, 2019
From prototype to real roads: the hurdles
Briseño’s own plan laid out the steps a new road material must pass. First, more engineering work and a short test strip under real traffic. Second, certification from ONNCCE, the Mexican body that evaluates and endorses construction products. Third, submitting a technical sheet to the federal transport ministry (SCT), which decides which asphalt specifications can be used in public works. In the longer term he hoped to set up his own construction company, and reports at the time said he also explored licensing the material to builders in exchange for a commission.
(The Facebook post originally embedded here is no longer available.)
Those steps exist for good reasons. A lab specimen that regains strength after one soak is a long way from a road that survives years of trucks, sun, heat, cold and repeated wetting. Engineers would want to know how deep a crack can heal, whether healing slows after many cycles, how the surface handles grip and braking, and whether additives leach into groundwater. No public results from field trials of Paflec had been reported at the time of the award.
Self-healing roads beyond Mexico
Briseño is part of a much wider research effort. Rubberised asphalt, which blends crumb rubber from old tyres into the binder, has been used in places such as Arizona and California for decades and can reduce road noise while recycling millions of tyres. At Delft University of Technology, researchers led by Erik Schlangen have tested asphalt laced with fine steel fibres that can be heated by induction to melt the binder and close small cracks. Delft microbiologist Henk Jonkers developed the bacteria-based self-healing concrete that inspired Briseño.
None of these approaches has made potholes disappear, but together they show that self-repairing infrastructure is a serious engineering goal, not science fiction. The smartest takeaway from the Paflec story is to cheer the ingenuity and the use of waste tyres, while waiting for field data before believing a road can truly mend itself.
Sources: James Dyson Award: Self-regenerating rubber pavement (2019); Enfoque Informativo on X (22 October 2019).
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