Self-healing materials: fabrication technique and applications—a critical review

One of the defining properties of self-healing materials is their capacity to spontaneously and independently repair damage, i.e. without any intervention from an outside source. This is one of the ways in which these materials are distinguished from others. In comparison to polymers, designing and implementing a self-healing mechanism in metals is a challenging task due to the inherent high melting temperatures and low atomic diffusivities of metals. This makes it difficult to develop and execute a self-healing mechanism in metals. The materials that are frequently used in engineering, automobile, aviation, and deep ocean oil well applications are subjected to a significant amount of pressure during the manufacturing process. The forms of material damage that are typically encountered in these applications include plastic flow instability, compromise to the automobile structural integrity, fatigue, and shape deformation. As a result of this, the industry is on the hunt for composite materials that not only have a high strength but also excel in their mechanical and tribological attributes. This article gives a summary and analysis of the numerous research efforts that have been done to generate self-healing metals and the applications that can make use of them. In conclusion, we talk about a few potential directions that future studies into the self-healing characteristics of metals could take. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag France SAS, part of Springer Nature.