Self-healing is a well-known phenomenon in nature: a broken bone merges after some time and if skin is damaged, the wound will stop bleeding and heals again. This concept can be mimicked in order to create polymeric materials with the ability to regenerate after they have suffered degradation or wear. Already realized applications are used in aerospace engineering, and current research in this fascinating field shows how different self-healing mechanisms proven successful by nature can be adapted to produce even more versatile materials.

The book combines the knowledge of an international panel of experts in the field and provides the reader with chemical and physical concepts for self-healing polymers, including aspects of biomimetic processes of healing in nature.

It shows how to design self-healing polymers and explains the dynamics in these systems. Different self-healing concepts such as encapsulated systems and supramolecular systems are detailed. Chapters on analysis and friction detection in self-healing polymers and on applications round off the book.

Wolfgang H. Binder is currently Full Professor for Macromolecular Chemistry at the Martin-Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (see www.macrochem.uni-halle.de). He received his PhD in Organic Chemistry in 1995 at the University of Vienna. In his post doc research at Emory University, USA, he specialized on colloidal chemistry/macro-molecular chemistry. In 1997 he became an Assistant Professor at the Technical University of Vienna and in 2004 Associate Professor. His research is focused on synthesis and self-assembly of tailored polymers and analytical polymer science, with applications in material science, nanotechnology and medicine; Wolfgang H. Binder has published more than 120 scientific articles.