Novel Encapsulation Technologies for Small Size-scale Self-healing Applications by Aaron

Self-healing technology offers an autonomic route to repairing damage in advanced polymers to extend their lifetime. A variety of self-healing systems have been developed for mechanical self-healing, protective coatings, and electronic self-healing. These self-healing systems rely on functional groups within the polymer, microvascular networks, or compartmentalization in capsules and particles. The healing agents become active in the crack plane upon damage, forming new bonds that heal the material. Of these systems, compartmentalization offers a simple and inexpensive means to apply self-healing to current advanced polymer applications. In this research, the primary motivation is to address challenges associated with small size-scale self-healing in compartmentalized systems. The term " small size-scale " in self-healing technology is applied to technologies where components are between 100 and 2000 nm. As the size of the capsules and particles decreases, current encapsulation methods do not ensure that self-healing components disperse well in a polymer matrix and that the components retain their contents during processing. The ring-opening metathesis polymerization reaction between