Self‐Healing Materials and Hydrogel for Biomedical Application

Abstract

The materials have the inherent property to recover their physical, chemical, mechanical properties, and rheological behavior through the dissipation of applied external rapturing forces. These materials can be of organic, organometallic, and polymeric origin. This advanced feature of these materials is called self-healing property, which enhances the lifespan of materials by balancing their mechanical integrity. Major factors that affect the self-healing capability of these materials are specific healing mechanisms, rate of propagation, repairing rate, and time of healing. Living species possess self-healing ability against damages up to certain limits, whereas non-living things are not capable of the same. At the current time, scientists are trying to incorporate and mimic nature's self-repairing capabilities into a non-living body. Self-healing materials have a variety of applications, from the construction area to the electronics and biomedical fields. In biomedical fields, polymeric hydrogel plays a significant role as a self-healing material. Hydrogel is a polymeric biomaterial that can keep a huge amount of water through the 3D hydrophilic polymeric network. But hydrogel owes specific issues, like, poor mechanical properties, large swelling ratio, and weakness against environmental stimuli. These critical issues are minimized by developing self-healing smart hydrogel that owes self-repairable ability, leading to superior stability and high strength. Their endowed property of biocompatibility, biodegradability, mechanical integrity, stimuli responsiveness, shear-thinning property, and self-healing property has ensured their prospective utilization in a variety of biomedical domains, e.g., tissue regeneration, drug delivery, wound healing, 3D printing, cell-laden bio-ink, soft robotics.