Wear Resistance of Polymers With Encapsulated Epoxy-Amine Self-Healing Chemistry

In this study, epoxy resin was microencapsulated through in situ polymerization in an oil-in-water emulsion, and amine was loaded into etched glass bubbles (GBs) as a curing agent for the microencapsulated epoxy resin. The purpose was to develop a two-component-self-healing system. The two healing agent carriers were co-incorporated in the epoxy matrix to form novel epoxy composites for tribological applications. The tribological results clearly showed that an increase in healing agent carrier content significantly decreased the friction and wear of the epoxy composites tested against a 6 mm steel ball under different normal loads. This was due to the self-lubricating and self-healing of the composites with released core liquids via the rupture of healing agent carriers during the wear test. It could be concluded that the co-incorporation of two healing agent carriers was a potential way to achieve a significant improvement in the tribological properties of epoxy matrix composites.