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The aim of this work is to investigate the self-healing performance of epoxy coatings containing microcapsules. The microcapsule-based coatings were applied on AA6061 Al alloy and immersed in 3.5 per cent NaCl solution.

Microcapsules with urea–formaldehyde as the shell and linseed oil as the healing agent were prepared by in situ polymerization in an oil-in-water emulsion. For the sake of an optimum self-healing system, some coating samples were prepared by using different microcapsule concentrations: 0, 5, 10 and 20 Wt.%. The scratch-filling efficiency as the theoretical estimate of the self-healing performance was calculated for the coating samples with different microcapsule concentrations. The scratch-sealing efficiency (SSE) as a particularly crucial parameter in the self-healing evaluation of coatings was measured by both electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) and electrochemical noise (EN) techniques.

According to EIS and EN results, the coating samples containing 5 and 10 per cent microcapsules provided the insignificant self-healing performance, while the coating sample containing 20 per cent microcapsules exhibited the acceptable self-healing performance to AA6061 alloy in the NaCl solution. The measured SSE values confirmed the good agreement of EN data with electrochemical parameters obtained from the EIS technique.

This work is an attempt to evaluate the self-healing performance of microcapsule-based epoxy coatings applied on AA6061 Al alloy in sea water.