A self-healing waterborne acrylic latex coating based on intrinsic hydrogen bonding

Abstract

Acrylic coatings suffer damage in the form of cracking, which degrades both their protective and aesthetic performance over time. Self-healing technology offers the ability to solve this problem by allowing cracks to spontaneously heal without external diagnosis or intervention, offsetting the enormous costs associated with coating damage and repair. However, there is currently no efficient self-healing acrylic coating design, and research in the area remains noticeably sparse. In this research we sought to imbue a mechanically tough methyl methacrylate (MMA)/butyl acrylate (BA)/acrylic acid (AA) acrylic coating with self-healing functionality by incorporating self-healing monomers within th..