News Production & Lab

Smart epoxy coating by using a vegetable oil

Reserachers describe the development of a smart epoxy coating through by using a vegetable oil. The coating showed excellent corrosion protection abilities.
Anti-corrosive coatings Bio-based coatings Epoxy resins
A graphic symbolises soybean oil.
Acrylated epoxidised soybean oil was used as a healing agent.  Image source: OpenClipart-Vectors - Pixabay - Pixabay (symbol image).

Two-component microcapsules of acrylated epoxidised soybean oil (AESO) as a healing agent and trimethylolpropane tris(3-mercaptopropionate) as hardener (TMPMP), were encapsulated with the poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) shell by solvent evaporation method.

No corrosion effect was observed

The two-component microcapsules were included in epoxy resin, and the healing performance of the system was assessed. From Electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) and salt spray test, the best self-healing performance was obtained for 0.5 wt% two-component microcapsules. For epoxy coatings containing 0.5 wt% of microcapsules, after five months of exposure under salt water 3.5 %, no corrosion effect was observed on the epoxy coating, indicating that there are enough high-performance materials in the microcapsules to heal cracks.

The study has been pubisched in Progress in Organic Coatings, Volume 170, September 2022.