International. A research team from the University of Aveiro in Portugal, is working on the creation of a new active protection layer, which is able to indicate when corrosion processes begin under coatings or in different defects.
The nanoreactors that are being introduced into the coating change their color in the areas where corrosion processes begin. An important feature of these nanoreactors is that the molecules they indicate are not released from mesoporous nanovehicles, thus preventing spontaneous leaching and ensuring extended service time.
The team, led by Mikhail Zheludkevich, a researcher at the Department of Materials and Ceramics Engineering (Ciceco), published their results on September 17, 2013 in the online edition of Nanotechnology.
"Corrosion detection can be considered as independent of the functionality of a protective coating or it can also be considered as an important additional functionality that can complement self-healing coatings," Zheludkevich told the Nanowerk portal.
"For example, the new coating developed by our group in collaboration with several European partners from the academic and industrial sectors is counting on the multi-level self-healing effect based on 'smart' nanocontainers. The main idea is that several self-healing mechanisms can be integrated into the same coating, providing effective active protection that is proportional to external impacts, such as corrosive attack, and mechanical impacts.
In such a coating, the active healing agents responsible for different mechanisms are encapsulated in nano or micro containers and then integrated into the polymer coating. Different nanocontainers can be introduced within different layers of the coating or can be used in a single layer system.
