MICROENCAPSULATION AND ITS VARIOUS ASPECTS: A REVIEW.

Microencapsulation is a well-established process of enveloping or surrounding one substance into another substance which gives capsules having range from less than one micron to several hundred microns in size. One of the highly efficient method is microencapsulation. The encapsulation efficiency of microcapsules, micro particles or microspheres rely upon various factors like solubility of polymer in solvent, concentration of polymer, solubility of organic solvent in water, rate of solvent removal etc. Substances can be encapsulated in such a way that the core material be confined within capsule shells (coating material) for particular interval of time. This technique has been used in different fields like pharmaceutical, agriculture, textile, food, printing and defence. In case of defence sector this technique has introduced the self-healing composites or chemical decontaminating fabrics. This article covers review on microencapsulation and materials involved, microencapsulation technologies, purposes of microencapsulation, morphology of microcapsules, methodology of microcapsules, release mechanism, application fields with microencapsulated additives in building construction materials.