Self-healing materials are able to partially or completely heal damage inflicted on them, e.g., crack formation; it is anticipated that the original functionality can be restored. This article covers the design and generic principles of self-healing materials through a wide range of different material classes including metals, ceramics, concrete, and polymers. Recent key developments and future challenges in the field of self-healing materials are summarised, and generic, fundamental material-independent principles and mechanism are discussed and evaluated.

The elastic constant tensor of an inorganic compound provides a complete description of the response of the material to external stresses in the elastic limit. It thus provides fundamental insight into the nature of the bonding in the material, and it is known to correlate with many mechanical properties. Despite the importance of the elastic constant tensor, it has been measured for a very small fraction of all known inorganic compounds, a situation that limits the ability of materials scientists to develop new materials with targeted mechanical responses. To address this deficiency, we present here the largest database of calculated elastic properties for inorganic compounds to date. The database currently contains full elastic information for 1,181 inorganic compounds, and this number is growing steadily. The methods used to develop the database are described, as are results of tests that establish the accuracy of the data. In addition, we document the database format and describe the different ways it can be accessed and analyzed in efforts related to materials discovery and design.

The mechanical properties of polycrystalline materials are largely determined by the kinetics of the phase transformations during the production process. Progress in x-ray diffraction instrumentation at synchrotron sources has created an opportunity to study the transformation kinetics at the level of individual grains. Our measurements show that the activation energy for grain nucleation is at least two orders of magnitude smaller than that predicted by thermodynamic models. The observed growth curves of the newly formed grains confirm the parabolic growth model but also show three fundamentally different types of growth. Insight into the grain nucleation and growth mechanisms during phase transformations contributes to the development of materials with optimal mechanical properties.

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