Recent advances in flexible self-healing materials and sensors

Endowing devices with the self-healing capacity is an effective approach to enhance their reliability, durability, and functionality, especially for flexible electronic materials and devices. This article reviews the developments in the field of flexible self-healing materials and sensors. This review first introduces the self-healing mechanism of intrinsic and extrinsic polymers, and the advances in self-healing flexible conductive materials are discussed briefly. Then, the fabrication techniques, sensing performance, and healing performance of the newly developed flexible self-healing sensors, especially the flexible self-healing force sensors, are described in detail. Finally, the existing challenges and some possible solutions for flexible self-healing materials and sensors are discussed.