Preparation of Colored Microcapsule Phase Change Materials with Colored SiO₂ Shell for Thermal Energy Storage and Their Application in Latex Paint Coating

• Main Authors: Enpei Ma, Zhenghuang Wei, Cheng Lian, Yinping Zhou, Shichang Gan, Bin Xu
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2021-07-01
• Series: Materials
• Subjects: phase change materials; microcapsule; colored SiO₂ shell; solar thermal energy storage; latex paint coating
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1944/14/14/4012

This article reports the design and manufacture of colored microcapsules with specific functions and their application in architectural interior wall coating. Utilizing reactive dyes grafted SiO₂ shell to encapsulate paraffin through interfacial polymerization and chemical grafting methods, this experiment successfully synthesized paraffin@SiO₂ colored microcapsules. The observations of surface morphology demonstrated that the colored microcapsules had a regular spherical morphology and a well-defined core-shell structure. The analysis of XRD and FT-IR confirmed the presence of amorphous SiO₂ shell and the grafting reactive dyes, and the paraffin possessed high crystallinity. Compared with pristine paraffin, the thermal conductivity of paraffin@SiO₂ colored microcapsules was significantly enhanced. The results of DSC revealed that the paraffin@SiO₂ colored microcapsules performed high encapsulation efficiency and desirable latent heat storage capability. Besides, the examinations of UV-vis and TGA showed that the paraffin@SiO₂ colored microcapsules exhibited good thermal reliability, thermal stability, and UV protection property. The analysis of infrared imaging indicated that the prepared latex paint exhibited remarkable temperature-regulated property. Compared with normal interior wall coatings, the temperature was reduced by about 2.5 °C. With such incomparable features, the paraffin@SiO₂ colored microcapsules not only appeared well in their solar thermal energy storage and temperature-regulated property, but also make the colored latex paint coating have superb colored fixing capabilities.