Smart phenolics for self-healing and shape memory applications

Although there are many types of curable systems, phenolic resins are still one of the major polymers and have very large production volumes. Beside, an alternative phenolic resin emerged in the last decades as more reactive and releasing less by-products during curing compared to classical phenolics. These resins are based on 1,3-benzoxazines and their polymers are coined as polybenzox-azines. Among high performance thermosets, polybenzoxazines exhibit a range of features. In general, polybenzoxazines exhibit low shrinkage during their production, high char yield and Tg. Moreover, they have good mechanical performance with low water adsorption. Consequently, polybenzoxazines gained a vast interest in polymer science. However, the general interest for polyben-zoxazines is related to their usage as composite ingredients, dielectric materials etc. On the other hand, the reactive nature of benzoxazine monomers and their huge design flexibility proved that these compounds have vast potential in designing smart materials. Although the development of these materials is in benzoxazine chemistry is premature, it is expected that there will be intensive studies to synthesize benzoxazine based self-healing, shape memory materials. In this chapter, an overview about polybenzoxazines and their current progress about the synthesis of benzoxazine-based materials for these unconventional uses are summarized.