polymer bulk materials or coating. Upon damaging the self-lubricating materials by friction, the embedded microcapsules simultaneously rupture, release the lubricant, form the transfer film, and then lubricate the wear surface. Therefore, selflubricating microcapsules must possess several features, such as excellent thermal stability, high encapsulation efficiency, and good lubricating properties.Various lubricants have been microencapsulated, including lubricant oil, [4][5][6][7] paraffin, wax, [8][9][10][11] diisocyanate, [12,13] and ionic liquid. [14][15][16] In addition to reducing friction and wear, lubricating oils are required to cool the rubbing surfaces that are heated due to friction. Thermooxidative stability of lubricants is essential to minimize degradation during service and storage. Lubricating oils may vaporize and sometimes may catch fire due to friction heat. Therefore, less volatile and nonflammable liquids are desirable for lubricants. [17] Compared with some common lubricants, ionic liquids have high thermal stabilities (the thermal degradation temperature is usually higher than 350 °C) and low volatility and non-flammability. These excellent properties make them more suitable as high-performance lubricants. [18][19][20][21] Nevertheless, when the wrapped core material is an ionic liquid, the encapsulation efficiency is lower because the high viscosity and bipolar nature of the ionic liquid make them difficult to disperse in a continuous phase during microencapsulation. [22][23][24][25] Recently, we have prepared ionic liquid [BMIm] PF 6 -loaded polyurea (PU) microcapsules with >70 wt% encapsulation efficiency by optimizing a Pickering emulsion and interface polymerization method. The Pickering emulsion was stabilized by lignin solid particles instead of molecular surfactants and some inorganic particles, and we found that the lignin exhibited excellent emulsifying properties for ionic liquid. [26] However, the smooth outer surface of PU microcapsules prevents them from forming a good interface with the resin matrix when they are used to prepared composites. In order to improve the thermal stability, mechanical properties, long-term stability at room temperature of microcapsules, and then to make these microcapsules were satisfy the requirements of the processing of polymeric composites under high temperatures and large shear stress conditions,
Self-Lubricating CompositesMultilayer wall microcapsules efficiently loaded with a lubricant (ionic liquid [BMIm]PF 6 ) are successfully synthesized via a combination of interfacial and in situ polymerization reactions based on lignin nanoparticle-stabilized Pickering emulsion templates. The resulting microcapsules are spherical in shape, with an ideal structure of a rough outer surface and a smooth inner surface. The mean diameter and wall thickness of the resultant microcapsules are 52 ± 18 µm and 3-6 µm. The core fraction is ≈71.29 wt%. Compared with the pure epoxy resin, the friction coefficient of self-lubricating composites decreases by 83.6% (fr...