Cut yourself and—if you’re lucky—your skin will heal with no trace in as little as a week. Crash your car into a wall or scratch its paintwork and you won’t be so fortunate; you’ll need to drive it to a repair shop for horribly expensive correction. Skin, bone, and the stuff of life is truly amazing: it can sense damage, stop it getting any worse, and repair itself automatically with little or no help from us. It’s incredible! If only metals, plastics, composites, and other everyday materials were half as smart. Soon they could be: in the early 2000s, scientists began developing selfhealing materials that could repair internal damage all by themselves. Before long, we’ll see self-healing paints and coatings—maybe even self-healing cars, bridges, and buildings! So how exactly do these wonder materials actually work? Let’s take a closer look!

Introduction

    Today’s....