Autonomic healing of polymers

Self-healing polymers have experienced rapid technological advancement over the past seven years. They have moved from a conceptual demonstration to practical application in this time frame and have grown from a single design to a generic paradigm for modern materials development. Potential applications of self-healing polymers are quite broad, including microelectronic substrates and encapsulants, polymeric paints and coatings, structural composites, and biomedical devices. In this article, we focus on polymeric systems that heal in an autonomic fashion, that is, automatically and without human intervention. The types of systems under development and the future of this paradigm in advanced materials are discussed.