A paper review Self-Healing Gels based on Constitutional Dynamic Chemistry and Their Potential Applications, authored by the doctoral student Wei Zhao, a member of professor Chen Yongmei's research group, was published in Chemical Society Review (2014, 43 (23): 8114 – 8131), the reputed review journal in the field of chemistry. The magazine is the flagship magazine of British Royal Chemistry Society. In 2014, its published influence factor was 30.425.

Self-healing gel is a kind of macromolecule intelligent material and has broad applications for its significance in biomedicine like histoengineering, the control release of medicine and cell therapy as well as in engineering technology like coating and sealed damage restoration. The paper gave a thorough review of the current research status of self-healing gel materials and forecasted the future development.

With the support of the National Key Laboratory of the Strength and Vibration of Machinery Structure and the Strength of Metal Material, Chen Yongmei's research team committed to studying the preparation of new flexible materials including self-healing water gel, shining water gel, magnet water gel, high strength water gel and ion liquid gel and their applications in cell culture bracket, sewage treatment and flexible appliances. Many papers were published on journals like Green Chem., ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces, Macromol. Rapid Commun. and J. Biomed. Mater. Res. A 7 Chinese patents were made and "flexible" intelligent materials were studied as a new research direction. The team built sustained collaborations with professor Osada Yoshihito of RIKEN, professor Miklós Zrínyi of Hungarian Semmelweis University and professor Patrick H. Dussault and professor Li Tan of American University of Nebraska-Lincoln etc.

The research was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation, the Start-up Fund for the Research of Returnees of the Ministry of Education, Shaanxi Province Science and Technology Research and Development Fund, the Shaanxi Province Key Science and Technology Innovation Fund and the research fund for basic researches of XJTU and was supported by Suzhou Nanoscience and Technology Coordination Innovation Center.