Deformation and durability control of microcapsules for electrophoretic display system

Abstract

Microcapsules of durability and deformability along with excellent transparency, which was designed for the application of electrophoretic display system, have been synthesized. Microcapsules were synthesized by two-step condensation polymerization using melamine-formaldehyde (MF) resin. In this work, durability and flexibility of MF microcapsules activated by acid catalyst were characterized by compression test accompanied by visual inspection. Microcapsules of MF-AA (using acetic acid as acid catalyst) were rapidly ruptured at force 0.8 mN, while those of MF-MA (using maleic anhydride as acid catalyst) were highly deformed to show a permanent failure at 3.8 mN. Furthermore MF-MA microcapsule showed extremely higher deformation ratio than MF-AA, implying that the maleic anhydride activated system would be much more durable and flexible than the MF system employing AA.