Recent progress in self-healing conductive materials and flexible sensors with desired functional repairability

Flexible sensors with skin-like self-healing and sensing properties are now drawing great attention for their prospective application in many promising fields, including electronic skins, wearable electronics and soft robots. However, the unavoidable irregularity external stimuli and repetitive motions usually resulting in function loss. So, the self-healing abilities on both mechanical and electrical characters are highly attractive. Till now, numerous studies have been given to realize the self-healing of mechanical properties, while the repair of electrical properties still remains a great concern. Herein, the current main methods to prepare self-healing flexible sensors are summarized and discussed, consisting of self-healing materials with conductive layers, self-healing materials with embedded conductive network and self-healing ionic conducting hydrogels. Finally, a summary and perspective on future research directions and the potential of each strategy are given. © 2021 IOP Publishing Ltd and SISSA Medialab srl.