Preparation of Microcapsules Coating and the Study of Their Bionic Anti-Fouling Performance

Abstract

With the increasing demands to better the marine environment, environmentally friendly anti-fouling coatings have attracted attention from society. Adding hydrolyzable microcapsules without toxin to paints is a very useful and safe method to get bionic anti-fouling coatings with a micro-nano surface structure. Based on this trend, a form of environment-friendly microcapsules were prepared through mini-emulsion polymerization. The target microcapsules had a poly(urea-formaldehyde) (PUF) shell and a mixed core of silicone oil and capsaicin. Additionally, the microcapsules were introduced into zinc acrylate resin to obtain bionic anti-fouling coatings with micro-nano morphology. The effects of polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) molecular weight, stirring rate, and temperature on the morphology of the microcapsules were studied by optical microscopy (OM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). It was found that spherical nanoparticles with smooth surfaces were obtained, and the mean diameter was approximately 1.38 μm when the molecular weight of PVA was 77 K, the stirring rate was 600 rpm and the temperature was 55 °C. Fourier-transform infrared spectra (FTIR) results showed that the silicone oil and capsaicin were successfully encapsulated, the core materials of the microcapsules reached 72.37% and the yield of microcapsules was 68.91% by the Soxhlet method. Furthermore, the hydrophobicity, corrosion resistance and anti-fouling performance of the coatings were evaluated by the water contact angle, electrochemical and real-sea tests. The results indicated that the anti-fouling coatings had excellent hydrophobicity and anti-fouling performance due to the micro-nano convex structure and the release of core materials. Encouragingly, the anti-fouling coatings show excellent and long-term anti-fouling performance, which is expected to be widely applied in marine anti-fouling coatings.

Research Strategies to Develop Environmentally Friendly Marine Antifouling Coatings

“…Li et al [ 75 ] prepared a form of environment-friendly microcapsules through mini-emulsion polymerization as show in Figure 17 . They used zinc acrylate resin to wrap the synthetic microcapsules into a coating, and investigated the slow release efficiency and antifouling effect of the coating.…”

Preparation of Microcapsules of Urea Formaldehyde Resin Coated Waterborne Coatings and Their Effect on Properties of Wood Crackle Coating

“…Three kinds of gloss were measured at incident angles of 20 • , 60 • and 85 • . The higher the value was, the higher the gloss was [31,32], which is shown in Table 2. It can be concluded that for microcapsules with the same core-wall ratio and incident angle, the gloss of the coating film without the microcapsules was the best, and then the gloss of the coating decreased with an increase of the mass fraction of the microcapsules.…”

Preparation and Sustained-Release Performance of PLGA Microcapsule Carrier System

“…It is important to prepare microcapsules with stable encapsulation and release efficiency using suitable methods [ 10 ]. Commonly used microcapsule preparation methods include the complex coacervation method, the ionic gel method, the microemulsion polymerization method, the layer-by-layer assembly method, and the air-suspension method [ 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 ]. Although many preparation technologies are suitable for microcapsules, no encapsulation method is suitable for all situations.…”