Degradation induced by corrosion has often a destructive effect on environment. It is an important problem that determines the service life of a vehicle or it's  components. Although traditional chrome conversion coating offers many advantageous coating properties, its use of hexavalent chromium is strictly regulated due to the compound's toxicity and suspected carcinogenicity.  There is an increasing demand to develop new environmentally friendly corrosion protection coating systems which show comparable performance as chrome coating. Therefore, both passive protection and active protection based on self healing on coating is necessary to provide long term effect.

Nanocapsules/Nanocontainers loaded with different active agents (e.g. water displacing agent, self healing agents, catalysts or corrosion inhibitors ) can be used to introduce multi-level protection of metal surfaces.

In the capsules, the functional materials/active agents are used as core materials (nanosize). Shell formation can be controlled at nanoscale or microscale in some cases. Nanocapsules keep the surface properties of a particle and permit in addition the controlled delivery of chemicals through a shell. By various external stimuli like pH, ions, heat, mechanical forces, or light, encapsulation and release can be realized.

This figure shows metal coatings containing nanosized capsules for improved corrosion protection.

Related projects :

Nanocaps

MUST

Contact person:   Juan Yang  ,  Christian Simon