A smart composite coating with photothermal response, anti-UV and anti-corrosion properties

In order to obtain high corrosion protection coatings and break the bottleneck of epoxy (EP) in the loss of ultraviolet (UV) radiation mechanical properties and physical shielding, we report herein a smart composite coating approach. Ce ion-intercalated montmorillonite (M-Ce) provides reaction sites for 2-fluoroaniline polymerization (PFA), and their nanohybrids (PFAM-Ce) are used as effective additives to improve the anti-corrosion and anti-UV properties of EP coating. In terms of UV resistance mechanism, the free radical scavenging of PFAM-Ce conducted by the DPPH radical activity test. And UV absorption of PFAM-Ce is investigated by photometric system. Additionally, we found that the EP coating was loaded with 2 wt% PFAM-Ce, and the composite coating quickly achieved light-to-heat conversion. In contrast to conventional epoxy-based composites, the functionalized MMT based EP composites show a significant improvement in corrosion resistance under UV radiation, that is passing the 500-hour weatherproof test (B-SUN-II) and 90-day 3.5 wt% NaCl immersion electrochemical testing. The results reveal that the uniformly dispersed PFAM-Ce in the fracture surface of the coating could provide the physical shielding, anodic protection and cathodic inhibition on the steel substrates. This provides a new method for the enhancement of UV resistance of epoxy coatings and reveals the importance of functionalized polyaniline in anti-UV and anti-corrosion.