Fabrication and Performance of Composite Microencapsulated Phase Change Materials with Palmitic Acid Ethyl Ester as Core

Microencapsulation of phase change materials (PCMs) could prevent the leakage of PCMs during solid–liquid phase change process. However, their applications are mainly limited by the compactness and thermal stability of the traditional polyurea shell microcapsules. To increase the thermal compactness and thermal stability of PCM microcapsules, tetraethylorthosilicate (TEOS) was employed to form polymer/SiO2 composite shells to enhance the mechanical performance of polyurea and polyurethane microcapsule via interfacial polymerization and in situ polymerization. The morphology and chemical components of the microcapsules were characterized by field-emission scanning electron microscope (FE-SEM) and Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy, respectively. The thermal properties of the microcapsules were investigated by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and thermal gravity analysis (TGA). The results showed the smoothness and compactness of both polyurea–SiO2 and polyurethane–SiO2 microcapsules enhanced slightly, when compared with that without TEOS addition. Moreover, the SiO2 composite shell had good effect on thermal compactness, as the weight loss rate of polyurea–SiO2 microcapsules and polyurethane–SiO2 microcapsules decreased 3.5% and 4.1%, respectively.