Self-healing polymers

Mimicking the behavior of nature is still a challenging goal for materials scientists, who have tried to replicate such interesting peculiarities of natural systems as their self-cleaning, self-lubricating, and self-healing characteristics. In particular, the possibility of designing, producing, and exploiting self-healing (self-mending or self-repairing) polymeric materials imitating, as an example, such natural processes as repairing bones or blood clotting, has opened the path toward the development of a new class of synthetic materials, with very high potential and able to ensure reduced maintenance costs, to extend the service life of parts and components, and to increase their safety and reliability. A lot of work has been carried out for designing and producing effective self-healing polymer systems: as a result, apart from several research outputs and achievements at the lab scale, there are many current industrial applications of these systems, ranging from scratch-resistant coatings to self-repairing tires. This chapter aims at classifying the different self-healing polymers, elucidating the mechanisms behind their current design, preparation, and characterization, and finally providing the reader with some perspectives about their possible further development in the near future is considered.