Chapter 17 - Applications of self-healing polymeric systems

Abstract

An ideal self-healing material is supposed to automatically, without any external action, recover its characteristics and integrity in a minimum amount of time necessary after the suffering damage and repeat this countless times. Inspired by nature, self-healing materials represent the forefront of recent developments in materials chemistry and engineering. Artificial self-healing materials that would be similar to biological objects in terms of restoring characteristics would offer huge opportunities, especially in the cases where it is necessary to provide the reliability of materials in not easily accessible zones as long as possible during their service life. Biocompatible self-healing composite may extend the service life of artificial bone, artificial teeth, and so on. Self-healing hydrogels are widely use as drug delivery, tissue engineering, wound dressing and 3D printing applications. Self-healing rubber could find applications in toy industry. Since it is a growing area, these materials find applications in various fields. But this chapter discusses the main applications of self-healing materials such as wound healing, tissue engineering, 3D printing, drug delivery, anticorrosion coatings, aerospace and electronics applications.