The Potential of Microencapsulated Self-healing Materials for Microcracks Recovery in Self-healing Composite Systems: A Review

The autonomic self-healing materials based on microcapsules have made major advancements for the repairing of microcracks in polymers and polymer composite systems. Self-healing encapsulated materials have the inborn ability to heal polymeric composites after being damaged by chemical and mechanical progressions. These intelligent micro-encapsulated self-healing materials possess great capabilities for recovering the mechanical as well aesthetic properties and barrier properties of the polymeric structures. Based on real world observations and experimental data, it is believed that microcracks and microcracking in polymeric materials can result because of many chemical and physical routes and is one of the foremost critical issues for polymeric materials. Especially in polymeric coatings, these microcracks can lead towards disastrous failure, and conventional healing systems like patching and welding cannot be used to repair microcracks at such a micro-level. Self-healing materials, especially, capsule based self-healing materials is a new field sought as an alternative to the conventional repairing techniques, requiring no manual intrusion and uncovering. This review covers the basic and major aspects of the microencapsulated self-healing approach like the effect of synthesis parameters on the size of microcapsules, healing efficiency determination, and the potential of the existing developed microencapsulated agents.