Self-healing and in-situ real-time damage-reporting fiber-reinforced composite

To increase the service life of composite materials, self-healing, and damage detection are essential. Although a lot of research has been done on self-healing and damage-reporting materials, it is still difficult to combine self-healing with in-situ and real-time damage detection in bulk resin and composites. By integrating extrinsic self-healing based on microcapsules and internal self-healing based on coordination interaction, the simultaneous self-healing of matrix and interface damage of fiber-reinforced composites was achieved in this study. Specifically, two-component microcapsules filled with epoxy/mercaptan repair agent were inserted into the matrix and Ag nanoparticles (AgNPs) were introduced into the surface of carbon fiber by electroless plating. Upon the rupture of microcapsules, matrix self-healing was used to reach a desirable level of synchronous healing efficiency. In the meantime, the excess sulfhydryl reacted with AgNPs on the fibers to establish a coordination bond for interface self-healing. More intriguingly, the high exothermic action of epoxy resin and mercaptan repair agent in the self-healing process was observed when using infrared thermal imaging technology for in-situ and real-time damage detection.