Self‐Healing Polymers Based on Coordination Bonds

Abstract Self‐healing ability is an important survival feature in nature, with which living beings can spontaneously repair damage when wounded. Inspired by nature, people have designed and synthesized many self‐healing materials by encapsulating healing agents or incorporating reversible covalent bonds or noncovalent interactions into a polymer matrix. Among the noncovalent interactions, the coordination bond is demonstrated to be effective for constructing highly efficient self‐healing polymers. Moreover, with the presence of functional metal ions or ligands and dynamic metal–ligand bonds, self‐healing polymers can show various functions such as dielectrics, luminescence, magnetism, catalysis, stimuli‐responsiveness, and shape‐memory behavior. Herein, the recent developments and achievements made in the field of self‐healing polymers based on coordination bonds are presented. The advantages of coordination bonds in constructing self‐healing polymers are highlighted, the various metal–ligand bonds being utilized in self‐healing polymers are summarized, and examples of functional self‐healing polymers originating from metal–ligand interactions are given. Finally, a perspective is included addressing the promises and challenges for the future development of self‐healing polymers based on coordination bonds.