Self-Healing Properties of New Surface Treatments

All branches of industry have, for many decades, utilised organic coatings with active pigments. In most cases the pigments have included zinc dust, red lead oxide or chromates, the protective mechanisms of which are well understood. However, the use of lead and chromate-based coatings is no longer permitted, due mainly to their toxic and carcinogenic characteristics, respectively. This has stimulated much interest in the development of new environmentally-friendly coatings with active pigments that convey "self-healing" characteristics. The use of advanced primers containing "smart" self-healing pigments with up to four cooperative effects aims to provide enhanced corrosion resistance for steel or aluminium structures. This new publication was motivated by the highly successful workshop on self-healing coatings held on 12 September 2007 at the European Federation of Corrosion's annual EUROCORR conference in Freiburg. It includes sixteen contributions, some of which were selected from the proceedings of the workshop (often in extended form) together with a number of specially invited articles and reviews. Among the coatings discussed are: organosilane films filled with nanoparticles and corrosion inhibitors; nanoparticle-containing polyaniline films; pyrrole-based silane primers; polypyrrole/aluminium flake hybrid pigments; ZrO2 sol-gel films; cerium-containing silica methacrylate sol-gel coatings, and many others.