One day in the near future dyes in electric motors might indicate when cable insulation is becoming brittle and the motor needs replacing. Scientists at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU), together with ELANTAS, a division of the specialty chemicals group ALTANA, have developed a new process that enables the dyes to be directly integrated into the insulation. By changing color, they reveal how much the insulating resin layer around the copper wires in the motor has degraded. The results were published in the journal Advanced Materials.