OZR opvangmandaat post doc Seyedreza Kashef Tabrizian

The emerging field of soft and flexible self-healing materials has found recent applications in soft robotics, addressing susceptibility to damage in new-generation robots. However, existing intrinsic and extrinsic self-healing materials, though promising, are not yet sufficiently robust for diverse soft robotics applications in unstructured environment. Intrinsic self-healing materials suffer significantly from limitations in growth capability and damage realignment, while for extrinsic self-healing materials, issues mostly lie in repeatable, controllable, and on-demand healing. The main objective is to bridge between these two classes of self-healing materials, leveraging the advantages of both and solving the issues. Drawing inspiration from the human body, which utilizes multi-material soft tissues and receives necessities for healing via blood pumping through the vascular system, offers a promising avenue for enhancing the robustness of self-healing under different damage conditions. The research aims involve the study of whether controlled solid-liquid transition in multi-material soft matters can enhance the physical and control-aspect limitations of current healing technologies. In this line, the question is whether an externally integrated vascular-like soft pumping system with self-control on the solid-liquid phase of the material can address the issues of damage realignment and material removal, by pumping liquified self-healing materials.