Smart protective coatings with self‐sensing and active corrosion protection dual functionality from pH-sensitive calcium carbonate microcontainers

Herein, we report the development of a self-sensing and active corrosion protection coating which incorporates pH-sensitive multilayer chitosan/alginate-covered CaCO3 microcontainers containing 1,10-phenanthrolin-5-amine (APhen). The microcontainers can respond to pH variation to release APhen which serves not only as a corrosion indicator but also as an inhibitor. An epoxy coating doped with 5 wt% microcontainers exhibited improved corrosion performance and was capable of inhibiting corrosion spreading from the damaged area in a 3.5 wt% NaCl solution. The salt spray test showed that corrosion damage can be quickly detected by the appearance of a red color within 2 min.