Self-Healing Materials: Mechanisms, Characterization, and Applications: A detailed Review

Abstract

There is a category of materials known as self-healing materials, which are distinguished by their inherent capacity to mend themselves in the event of internal damage or fractures. Because it possesses a built-in healing mechanism, it possesses this one-of-a-kind power. This system can react to injury in methods that range encompassing chemical reactions, physical alterations, and biological processes. The need to extend the endurance and longevity of materials used in a variety of industries, such as building, transportation, and electronics, has been a driving force behind the creation of self-healing materials. The mechanisms that are used to research self-healing materials as well as the approaches that are used to characterise them are discussed in this article. The many methods of self-healing, such as microcapsule-based healing, intrinsic healing, and extrinsic healing, are explored in this article. Intrinsic healing is also covered. In addition, the characterization methods that were utilised in order to evaluate the efficacy of the healing process, such as mechanical assessment, thermal evaluation, and microscopy, are discussed here. In addition, the prospective usages for self-healing materials in several industries, such as coatings, adhesives and related products composites, and biomedical devices, are addressed in this article. In this article, the advantages of using self-healing materials in certain applications are described such as an improvement in the materials' longevity, reliability, and sustainability.