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Self-Healing Metals

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Self-healing Materials

Part of the book series: Advances in Polymer Science ((POLYMER,volume 273))

Abstract

Designing self-healing in metals is a challenging task. Self-healing concepts successfully applied in polymers cannot be directly transferred because of different energetics. This has detained the field of self-healing metals, as evidenced by absolute publication numbers. Yet, relative publication numbers indicate a rapidly increasing interest in recent years triggered by the potential economic impact of advanced metallic materials. This chapter reviews all currently available self-healing concepts in bulk metallic materials. We provide a classification into two conceptually distinct routes: (1) autonomous self-healing of nanovoids at the nanoscale, aiming at a prevention of large-scale damage and (2) non-autonomous self-healing of macrocracks by an external trigger such as heat. The general idea of each self-healing concept is comprehensibly introduced, relevant publications are reviewed, and the characteristics of the concepts are compared. Finally, we discuss current constraints and identify the most promising concepts.

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Acknowledgements

Funding by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (SPP 1568) and the European Research Council under the EU’s 7th Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013)/ERC Grant Agreement No. 290998 is gratefully acknowledged.

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Correspondence to Blazej Grabowski .

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Grabowski, B., Tasan, C.C. (2016). Self-Healing Metals. In: Hager, M., van der Zwaag, S., Schubert, U. (eds) Self-healing Materials. Advances in Polymer Science, vol 273. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/12_2015_337

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