Design and synthesis of self-healing polymers

Self-healing polymers represent a class of materials with built-in capability of rehabilitating damages. The topic has attracted increasingly more attention in the past few years. The on-going research activities clearly indicate that self-healing polymeric materials turn out to be a typical multi-disciplinary area concerning polymer chemistry, organic synthesis, polymer physics, theoretical and experimental mechanics, processing, composites manufacturing, interfacial engineering, etc. The present article briefly reviews the achievements of the groups worldwide, and particularly the work carried out in our own laboratory towards strength recovery for structural applications. To ensure sufficient coverage, thermoplastics and thermosetting polymers, extrinsic and intrinsic self-healing, autonomic and non-autonomic healing approaches are included. Innovative routes that correlate materials chemistry to full capacity restoration are discussed for further development from bioinspired toward biomimetic repair.