Self‐lubrication and tribological properties of SBA‐15 as smart microcontainer and resin composites

Abstract In this work, we showed that the mesoporous molecular sieve SBA‐15 could be used as an oil storage smart microcontainer to adsorb PAO6 oils and is prepared as an oil‐containing molecular sieve SBA‐15O, the compositing of SBA‐15O with unsaturated polyester resins (UPR) can significantly improve the lubrication properties of UPR. The oil‐containing molecular sieve SBA‐15O was prepared by vacuum impregnation and compounded into the UPR. The lubricating effect of different SBA‐15O contents on the UPR was investigated. As compared with the UPR, the coefficient of friction (COF) of the 10%SBA‐15O/UPR could be reduced to 10% of that without SBA‐15O, and the wear rate by three orders of magnitude. The results show that the improvement of lubricating performance is related to the release of lubricating oil from the microcontainer to the surface to produce a lubricating oil film during friction, thereby enhancing the self‐lubricating performance of the composite material.