(755a) Sustainable Anticorrosive Self-Healing Smart Coatings for Metal Protection

Corrosion and failure of petroleum-production processing equipment, pipelines, storage facilities, and transportation equipment is one of the largestâ??and most costlyâ??fundamental problems facing the petroleum industry. In the US alone, preventable costs upwards of $US 85 billionâ??a value >5% of the US gross national product (GNP)â??are incurred annually to the petroleum industry. Typical metal coatings are susceptible to damage in the form of small cracks. Once cracks have formed within polymeric coating materials, the integrity of the structure is significantly compromised and the underlying metals are exposed to the environment-leading to corrosion. Smart self-healing coatings for corrosion protection of metallic substrates (steel, magnesium, and aluminium, and their alloys) have attracted tremendous interest due to their capability to prevent crack propagation in the protective coatings by releasing active agents from microcapsules. Here we report a polymeric coating containing microcapsules with the ability to automatically heal micro-cracks in real-time. The polyurethane (PU) microcapsules containing self-polymerizing linseed oil was successfully synthesized by interfacial polymerization. In controlled healing tests, the damaged coatings successfully healed and continued to protect the structure without any intervention. We envision this smart material having great potential in the field of metal coating corrosion protection.