Self-healing Materials and applications

Abstract

Self-healing materials promise new technologies that can imitate the mechanisms of self-healing in natural organisms. Scientists are developing these concepts to improve the lifetime of materials, leading to reduced cost (both financial and environmental) of maintenance or re-purchase. Generally, self-healing materials are polymers with dynamic properties at both the molecular level and supramolecular level, termed Constitutional Dynamic Chemistry. Provided that materials have been damaged, self-repair occurs via the reversible reactions embedded in the material. Self-repair can proceed automatically or be triggered by external stimuli such as heat, light, pressure, acid or base. Recently, researchers have applied these materials towards applications in the biomedical field, sensing, new materials, pharmaceuticals, and tissue engineering. In this article, we will focus on the mechanisms of self-healing in these materials and their applications.