Self-Healing Polymeric Materials

During the last few years, synthetic self-healing materials have become a new class of emerging smart materials with the ability to repair damage and restore lost or degraded properties or performance using resources inherently available to the system. Success in the design of self-healing materials is important to material safety, product reliability and prolonged lifetime. This article covers fundamental material-independent principles and different self-healing approaches for polymeric materials. Among these approaches, some depend on specific external stimulus to achieve their goal while others regain the physical properties of the pristine material without such external intervention. Both the mechanisms and performance of different methods are discussed and evaluated, along with their advantages and disadvantages. In the end, both the potential application areas and the main challenges are also discussed in this article for a better understanding of future development trend of self-healing polymeric materials.