Innovations in Self-Healing Polymers for Next-Generation Wearable Electronics: Materials, Mechanisms, and Future Direction

Abstract: In recent years, self-healing qualities have drawn a lot of attention for practical engineering uses in robotics, electronics, sports materials, building, construction, and aerospace. Self-healing is bio-inspiring and has been utilized to fix fractures and damage while maintaining the structural integrity of the material. The self-healing properties of polymers, such as thermosetting and thermoplastics, have been extensively proven by polymer composites and nanocomposites. The trend for composite material repair is autonomic healing systems, which is a technical departure from mechanical repair. With the goal of creating safe, dependable, and healthy medical devices employing flexible sensors with better bio-functionality and high sensing performance, advancements in digital health care have spurred innovations in smart sensors and high-performance wearables. Materials scientists and device engineers are interested in these devices because of their clever properties, which include selfhealing, biocompatibility, and biodegradability. Self-healing polymer composites are naturally able to fix damage, either by themselves or with help from others. It has been demonstrated that inorganic nanoparticles significantly impact the fields of life sciences, energy harvesting and storage, microelectronics, and light manipulation. Inorganic nanoparticles and organic building blocks combine to form polymer nanocomposites, which have desirable properties including hydrophilicity, hydrophobicity, and mechanical toughness. Although rubbers composed of a supramolecular network of oligomers have shown a remarkable ability to mend themselves, their resistance to solvents and creep is limited by the lack of chemical cross-links.