A systematic study has been carried out to compare the surface morphology, shell thickness, mechanical properties and binding behavior of melamine formaldehyde microcapsules of 5 to 30 μm diameter size with various amounts of core content by using scanning and transmission electron microscopy including electron tomography, in-situ nanomechanical tensile testing and electron energy-loss spectroscopy. It is found that porosities are present at the outside surface of the capsule shell but not at the inner surface of the shell. Nano-mechanical tensile tests on the capsule shells reveal that the Young’s modulus of the shell material is higher than that of bulk melamine formaldehyde and that the shells exhibit a larger fracture strain compared to the bulk. Core-loss elemental analysis of microcapsules embedded in epoxy indicates that during the curing process, the microcapsule-matrix interface remains uniform and the epoxy matrix penetrates into the surface microporosities of the capsule shells.
Instituto de Investigaciones en Ciencia y Tecnologia de MaterialesCONICET
Gent UniversityPCR
Vrije Universiteit BrusselSURF
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Heidari, H., Rivero, G., Idrissi, H., Ramachandran, D., Cakir, S., Egoavil, R., Kurttepeli, M., Crabbé, A., Hauffman, T., Terryn, H., Du Prez, F., & Schryvers, N. (2016). Micro- and nanostructural characterization of melamine-formaldehyde microcapsule shells using electron microscopy. European Microscopy Congress 2016: Proceedings. Published. European Microscopy Conference (EMC2016), Lyon, France. https://doi.org/10.1002/9783527808465.EMC2016.5750