Journal of Materials Science, Vol.55, No.21, 8861-8867, 2020
Fabrication of self-reactive microcapsules as color visual sensing for damage reporting
The visual sensor of microcapsule has attracted great interest because of its application in damage reporting. In this work, a self-reactive microcapsule was designed that can report the damage via a color development. The results of Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy showed that the indicator dye was successfully encapsulated in the polymer shell adhered with surface activator. When the self-reactive microcapsules were damaged, the color of microcapsules turned into blue to highlight the damaged spot. The visual microcapsules were successfully applied for reporting the damage of shearing, pressuring and stretching in the polymer film, which illustrates the potential of proposed visual microcapsules for the surface damage reporting as a visual sensor.