title: Self-Healing Hydrogels.
abstract: Over the past few years, there has been a great deal of interest in the development of hydrogel materials with tunable structural, mechanical, and rheological properties, which exhibit rapid and autonomous self-healing and self-recovery for utilization in a broad range of applications, from soft robotics to tissue engineering. However, self-healing hydrogels generally either possess mechanically robust or rapid self-healing properties but not both. Hence, the development of a mechanically robust hydrogel material with autonomous self-healing on the time scale of seconds is yet to be fully realized. Here, the current advances in the development of autonomous self-healing hydrogels are reviewed. Specifically, methods to test self-healing efficiencies and recoveries, mechanisms of autonomous self-healing, and mechanically robust hydrogels are presented. The trends indicate that hydrogels that self-heal better also achieve self-healing faster, as compared to gels that only partially self-heal. Recommendations to guide future development of self-healing hydrogels are offered and the potential relevance of self-healing hydrogels to the exciting research areas of 3D/4D printing, soft robotics, and assisted health technologies is highlighted.
authors.affiliation: Soft Materials Group, School of Chemistry, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW, 2522, Australia.
authors.forename: Danielle Lynne
authors.initials: DL
authors.lastname: Taylor
authors.affiliation: Soft Materials Group, School of Chemistry, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW, 2522, Australia. panhuis@uow.edu.au.|ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science, AIIM Facility, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW, 2522, Australia. panhuis@uow.edu.au.
authors.forename: Marc
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: In Het Panhuis
keywords: autonomous; hydrogels; self-healing; self-recovery; tough