Functional self-healing materials and their potential applications in biomedical engineering

Abstract

With the development of smart materials, stimulus-responsive self-repairing materials attract more and more research attention. Although self-healing materials including concretes, rubbers, and hydrogels have been extensively investigated in the past decades, novel functionalities or properties such as shape memory, sol–gel transition, adhesion, anti-biofouling, and electronic/magnetic property have been introduced to self-repairing systems in recent years in order to broaden the scope of their applications in energy, drug delivery, tissue adhesion, cell culture, etc. In this paper, we first present an overview of the general strategies to prepare self-healing materials and the characterization methods to assess their healing performance. Then, we mainly focus on reviewing recent progress in novel self-healing materials possessing unique functionalities and their potential applications in biomedical engineering. Finally, the challenges and scope for future development are also discussed.