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Advances in Self-Healing Composites

A special issue of Materials (ISSN 1996-1944). This special issue belongs to the section "Smart Materials".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (20 March 2022) | Viewed by 368

Special Issue Editors

Institute of Polymers, Composites and Biomaterials (IPCB), National Research Council, P.le Enrico Fermi 1, 80055 Portici, Italy
Interests: self-healing; epoxy resin; liquid crystalline polymers; thermosets; composites; cultural heritage
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
State Key Laboratory of Polymer Engineering Materials, Sichuan University, Cheng Du, China
Interests: graphene nancomposites; dynamic polymer and mechanochemistry; polymer materiasls for 3D printing
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The story of self-healing composites can probably be dated back more than 2000 years, when Romans used a concrete incorporating aggregates of various dimensions and density and constructed complicated structures such as the Pantheon dome. The Pantheon dome is the largest and oldest unreinforced concrete structure, where the presence of pozzolanic ash prevents the formation and spreading of cracks.

We can assume that the Romans were not aware of the mechanism of self-healing, but its remediating effects enabled the development of the “Concrete Age” and resulted in buildings capable of defying the wear and tear of time better than today’s materials.

In the contemporary panorama of technologically-advanced self-healing materials, polymers undoubtedly assume a primary role because of their widespread use and the wide variety of self-healing mechanisms available.

From the pioneering work in the mid-1990 of Dry, White, and Sottos at the University of Illinois, who demonstrated a self-healing phenomenon in polymeric materials, the requirement of local and temporary molecular mobility was recognized as the main characteristic capable of activating self-healing behavior. It can be achieved with the introduction of encapsulated and reactive fluids (extrinsic self-healing), or by the cleavage and reformation of reversible chemical bonds (intrinsic self-healing), which were introduced in 2002 by Wudl and co-workers.

Regardless of the activation mechanism, self-healing composites potentially offer greater durability for severe load-bearing applications in which safety is a concern and where repair and maintenance are expensive.

In addition, the development of self-healing thermosets incorporating dynamic bonds can introduce a new paradigm in developing materials that can combine the reworkability and recyclability of thermoplastics with structural and chemical resistance of thermosets, enabling the development of high performance thermoset composites with reduced CO2 footprints.

This Special Issue highlights the achievements and applications of self-healing composites. Contributions also focus on the molecular dynamics at the base of self-healing and the assessment of its effectiveness, and the interfacial adhesion and self-healing at the fiber matrix interface.

Dr. Eugenio Amendola
Prof. Hesheng Xia
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Materials is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • self-healing
  • composites
  • dynamic bond
  • reversible bond
  • extrinsic
  • intrinsic
  • covalent adaptive network (CANs)
  • vitrime
  • interlaminar shear strength
  • multiple healing

Published Papers

There is no accepted submissions to this special issue at this moment.
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