Self-Healing Magnetic Materials for Next-Generation Soft Electronics and Robotics

Abstract

Bioinspired magnetic soft materials and devices have been widely developed for human–machine interaction, robotic technologies, wearable electronics, and energy harvesting. However, accidental damage and environmental changes often limit their operational durability, giving rise to the need for frequent replacements. To address this issue, this Review emphasizes the importance and advantages of integrating self-healing capabilities into flexible magnetic devices. We comparatively analyze five core healing mechanisms of the existing self-healing magnetic materials. Subsequently, their design strategies and key properties are outlined according to the major polymer matrices (gels, elastomers, and other polymeric networks). We also discuss the structure–property trade-offs across particle-filled and particle-free material systems, as well as their potential applications in sensing, robotics, energy storage/conversion, and implantable biomedicine. Despite these advances, critical challenges still remain for current self-healing magnetic soft materials and devices in terms of the trade-off between magnetic performance and self-healing capability, durability under extreme environments, long-term sustainability, and commercialization applications. Finally, this Review summarizes these challenges and presents future perspectives of such materials and devices for the fields of intelligent soft electronics and robotics.