Recent advancements in self-healing materials and their application in coating industry

Abstract

Self-healing polymers (SHP), inspired by nature, are materials that have the ability to recover themselves from various physical damages in the presence of different inducing environments. The self-recovering property indicates the capability to heal the cracks in their very nascent stage at their micro or nano-level size and provides a door to prevent them from any major catastrophic failure. In this article, a comprehensive review with updated reported work on various types of self-healing mechanisms and their advantages and limitations has been discussed, along with their applications. The main focus of the review has been aligned with the challenges and future scopes associated with the exploration of self-healing concepts for industrial coating applications. The different extrinsic, intrinsic, and combined healing mechanisms have been explained, along with their application in coating. Finally, the recent status of healing technology and future research trends has been discussed in this review article.