Integration of metal co-dopted cysteine builted in porous covalent organic framework (COF) decorated 2D hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) for multi-functional smart coatings.

Advanced multi-functional epoxy coating with physical barrier/shielding against corrosive species, self-repairing-capability/active anti-corrosive behavior, abrasion resistance, and thermomechanical durability was established in this study. For this purpose, zinc/l-cysteine (ZC) inbuilt pH-sensitive covalent organic framework (COF) decorated two dimensional (2D) layered amino-functionalized (Si) oxidized hexagonal boron nitride (ZC-COF-Si-Oh-BN) container was prepared. Different analyses such as FT-IR, XRD, BET, XPS, TGA, TEM, and FE-SEM were utilized to evaluate the synthesized containers and pristine materials. To figure out the function of entry of the ZC-COF-Si-Oh-BN container into the epoxy coating (EC/ZC-COF-Si-Oh-BN), the EIS, salt spray (SS), cathodic disbondement (CD), pull-off adhesion, Taber abrasion, and dynamic mechanical thermal analysis (DMTA) tests were employed. The results revealed that the introduction of the ZC-COF-Si-Oh-BN container into the neat epoxy polyamide coating (EC) improved the physical barrier protection with a value of log |Z| equal to 10.22 even after too long soaking time of 112 days in the saline solution (3.5 wt% of sodium chloride), and recovery-capability/active anti-corrosive behavior with 20.6 % healing degree after 7 h of soaking time. The abrasion weight loss for the EC and EC/ZC-COF-Si-Oh-BN coatings after 2000 abrasion cycles was about 4.8, and 4.1 mg, respectively, with 14.5 % improvement in abrasion resistance.