Isotropic pressure promoted collective self-healing response in granular molecular crystals

The ability to spontaneously heal injuries is an important survival feature for humans,plants,and animals in nature.Inspired by nature,man-made self-healing materials that are capable of repairing damage and degraded properties either autonomously or triggered by external stimuli have been developed to improve the lifetime,safety,and functionality of products[1–3].to date,most self-healing materials are representative soft materials,such as polymers and gels[4–6].Relative to highly elastic and adaptive soft materials,long-range ordered molecular crystals are rigid and unadaptable and are highly vulnerable to stress-induced cracks.Accordingly,the self-healing property is meaningful for ordered molecular crystals as it can endow molecular crystals with the ability to resist the loss of functionality and service lifetime during specific applications。