Abstract
In this study, microcapsules as potential candidates for self-healing agents were prepared by in situ polymerisation, taking place in oil-in-water emulsion. Poly(melamine-formaldehyde) is employed as shell material and diglycidyl ether of bisphenol A as polymerisable core materials and Pentaerythritol Tetrakis(3-Mercaptopropionate) as its hardener. The geometry, shell features, size distributions, core content, and the reactivity of the microcapsules were studied by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), optical microscopy (OM), Soxhlet extraction method and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). Microcapsules with different sizes and distributions were obtained by adjusting the stirring speeds during the preparation stage. From the results, it was established that the spherical microcapsules fabricated using this technique, resulted in satisfactory size and shell structure with shell thickness of less than 2 μm. The microcapsules possess high core content at about 90 wt.% for each size range of microcapsules and it was also observed that the viscosity of the core content decreased at an elevated temperature. The results obtained in this work indicate that these microcapsules possess the characteristics that can be potentially used for self-healing applications.
In situ poly(melamine-formaldehyde) microencapsulation of diglycidyl ether of bisphenol-A epoxy and pentaerythritol tetrakis(3-mercaptopropionate) for self-healing applications
