Benzotriazole-Driven Graphene Oxide Encapsulation Technique for One-Component Microcapsule Systems with Ultrahigh Performance

The benzotriazole (BTA)-driven graphene oxide (GO) encapsulation technique can significantly enhance the microcapsules’ overall properties, showing great potential in various fields. However, this BTA-driven GO encapsulation technique has been reported only for two-component microcapsule systems. Herein, its application in one-component microcapsule systems was studied. Three different one-component microcapsule systems have been successfully prepared by optimizing various parameters including temperature, core/wall ratio, emulsifier concentration, rotation speed, GO dosage, BTA/GO ratio, etc., by univariate experiments. Fourier transform infrared, Raman spectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy, particle size distribution, and thermogravimetric analysis demonstrated the successful preparation of the one-component microcapsules. The BTA/GO one-component microcapsules were further used in cardanol-based anticorrosion coatings. Compared with a pure biobased epoxy coating, the Z|_{0.01 Hz} of the composite coating has been significantly improved from 7.86 × 10⁵ Ω cm² to 3.47 × 10¹⁰ Ω cm², nearly 5 orders of magnitude. Our results demonstrated the great potential of the BTA-driven GO encapsulation technique in extrinsic self-healing.