An Updated Review on Self-Healing Barrier Materials with Potential Application in Contaminated Soil / Groundwater Risk Control

Barrier materials are highly susceptible to breakage under various disturbances leading to pollution barrier failure. Therefore, it is necessary to construct self-healing materials for pollution barrier technology. Barrier materials are highly similar in composition to concrete materials. Therefore, the self-healing mechanism of concrete materials and related evaluation methods are described in detail. Based on the existing self-healing materials, the possibility of combining different self-healing mechanisms with barrier materials and the compatibility of self-healing mechanisms with complex polluted environments were analyzed in detail. Barrier self-healing materials not only ensure the long-term effectiveness of pollution barrier technology, but also significantly extend the service life of pollution barrier walls. Therefore, this paper proposes a theoretical support for the self-healing mechanism of barrier materials and points out the key research direction of pollution barrier technology in the future.