Abstract
To address the life span of materials in the process of daily use, new types of structural nanofibers, fabricated by multifluid electrospinning to encapsulate both epoxy resin and amine curing agent, were embedded into an epoxy matrix to provide it with self-healing ability. The nanofibers, which have a polyacrylonitrile sheath holding two separate cores, had an average diameter of 300 ± 140 nm with a uniform size distribution. The prepared fibers had a linear morphology with a clear three-chamber inner structure, as verified by scanning electron microscope and transmission electron microscope images. The two core sections were composed of epoxy and amine curing agents, respectively, as demonstrated under the synergistic characterization of Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), and differential scanning calorimetry. The TGA results disclosed that the core-shell nanofibers contained 9.06% triethylenetetramine and 20.71% cured epoxy. In the electrochemical corrosion experiment, self-healing coatings exhibited an effective anti-corrosion effect, unlike the composite without nanofibers. This complex nanostructure was proven to be an effective nanoreactor, which is useful to encapsulate reactive fluids. This engineering process by multiple-fluid electrospinning is the first time to prove that this special multiple-chamber structure has great potential in the field of self-healing.
Highlights
As a cheap adhesive, epoxy resin is widely used in industrial production because of its excellent chemical properties and good sealing performance [1,2,3]
To prevent crack propagation and increase the service life of materials, this work successfully prepared a novel, multiple-chamber, nano-structural fiber with an excellent healing effect by using multiple-fluid electrospinning, and the self-healing ability of this fiber was verified by scratch coating
The average diameter of the fiber was 300 ± 140 nm and showed a linear morphology characterized by nonstring beads
Summary
Epoxy resin is widely used in industrial production because of its excellent chemical properties and good sealing performance [1,2,3]. The skin can recover within a few days after being scratched because of the function of platelets in the human body [7] Inspired by this interesting natural phenomenon, White and his coworkers reported an epoxy-based microcapsule as a self-healing system in 2001 [8]. People found that composite materials containing a bionic microvascular network can simultaneously repair multiple cracks [9,10]. Both microcapsules [11,12,13,14] and microvascular network [15,16,17] have a tedious preparation process, thereby greatly limiting their potential applications. How to simplify the preparation process and endow self-healing materials with good self-healing performance has drawn increasing attention [18,19]
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