Mesoporous silica as smart lubrication containers applied to self-lubricating polyurethane materials

Self-lubricating composite with stimuli-responsive properties attracts great interest in recent years. Herein, mesoporous silica (MS) as oil-laden containers is explored to achieve self-lubricating feature. The as-prepared MS possesses a high Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) surface area (1,542.35 m 2 /g), which satisfies the criterion for construction of ideal repository for storing enough liquid lubricants. In addition, the thermal stimuli-responsiveness behavior of the oil-laden mesoporous silica (OMS) for lubrication has been investigated by thermogravimetric analyzer tester. As expected, an excellent tribological performance (friction coefficient and wear rate decreased by 63.29 and 82.63%) is obtained by adding 10 wt% OMS into the polyurathene matrix, showing great promise for self-lubricating application.