Researchers from North Carolina State University and the University of Houston have achieved sustained self-healing of a composite material. The findings promise to extend the lifetime of aircraft and automotive parts by a century, according to a recent paper published in the *Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences*. Composite materials bond two or more components to achieve balanced strength, flexibility and durability. Bone is a naturally occurring example, combining flexible collagen fibres with the stiffness of various minerals. Fibre-reinforced polymers (FRPs) are synthetic analogues that embed strong fibres within a polymer matrix to achieve similar material advantages, making them ubiquitous in aerospace, naval and wind energy sectors. While bonding multiple layers is necessary to enforce strength, it makes the material prone to interlaminar delamination, or the separation of layers.…