Investigation of the self-healing properties of shape memory polyurethane coatings with the ‘odd random phase multisine’ electrochemical impedance spectroscopy

The aim of this work is to study the physical self-healing properties of shape memory polyurethanes (SMPUs) with cerium ions on top of a pure aluminum substrate. To achieve this, the ‘odd random phase multisine’ electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) is used. The additional information given by this technique (stochastic noise, non-linear and non-stationary behavior of the sample during the measurement) has been useful to verify the quality of the measurement. Moreover, combined with a fitting algorithm weighted by the stochastic noise, these elements of information proved powerful in rejecting, accepting or improving electrical equivalent circuit models used to fit the impedance spectra. These SMPU consist of two parts: a soft matrix in caprolactone and a hard part in polyurethane. SMPU with 12, 30 and 41% of hard phase were investigated. The results showed that a physical self-healing can be observed for the coating with 12% of hard phase.