Self Healing Materials: An Alternative Approach to 20 Centuries of Materials Science

“As a general principle natural selection is continually trying to economise every part of the organisation. ” That was Charles Darwin, writing over 100 years ago about e- ciency innature. Naturalmaterialsareremarkably efficient. Byefficient wemeanthat they fulfil the complex requirements posed by the way plants and animals function, and that they do so using as little material as possible. Many of these requirements are mechanical in nature: the need to support static and dynamic loads cre...