Steel-made infrastructures have been expanding at an incredible rate worldwide and are critical for the expansion and operation of countless industries. Steel is susceptible to corrosion failures, particularly in aggressive environments, and requires surface protection and effective corrosion management to avoid failures. Corrosion failures are a serious and costly problem. In the Middle East region, the direct costs of corrosion are estimated at around 5% of the gross domestic profit (GDP). The indirect costs are much higher and often unpredictable. Given the economic importance of steel-made infrastructures, its corrosion creates major problems for many industries, namely the oil and gas industry, and is responsible for very high operational expenditures (OPEX). Consequently, the coating industry is under constant pressure, as they need to supply the best coatings to the end-users, ensuring adequate corrosion protection and compliance with the environmental requirements. Corrosion protective coatings are the prime choice for steel protection and are, nowadays, the focus of considerable attention and intense research effort. The reason is that there is an extraordinary increase in environmental consciousness that has been accompanied by new legislation and regulations that concern people's safety, assets sustainability, reliability, and protection of the environment. This scenario poses an enormous challenge to the industry: how to comply with these requirements while keeping competitive solutions and sustainable operations and maintenance costs. Smart multifunctional coatings are providing a viable solution to address the corrosion challenges in a wide range of industries due to their promising self-healing properties. The targeted properties of smart multifunctional coatings are deeply influenced by the type of functionalities, pigments (including smart carriers), inhibitors, self-healing agents, the matrix itself, and the synthesis route. A large variety of anti-corrosion pigments have been designed and used as smart carriers to encapsulate/load various types of inhibitors and/or self-healing agents. In this review, we summarized the recent developments made in the field of pigments used as smart carriers for corrosion protection of steel in numerous industrial applications. Various nanocarriers, also referred to as smart nanocarriers, have been reported comprising of inorganic, organic, and hybrid scaffolds and used as additives in coatings for corrosion protection of different materials. This review also includes various characterization techniques employed to evaluate the self-healing performance of coatings modified with smart carriers. Besides, commendable advances, there is still the need for progress in designing novel smart carriers compatible with different coatings matrices and able to be loaded with various chemical species to enhance the corrosion protection ability and self-healing performance. It is, therefore, essential to review the earliest developments made so far for a better understanding of the existing strategies. A concise overview on this topic will provide a robust scientific background and will serve as a baseline to synthesize future novel smart carriers for developing anti-corrosion coatings with improved self-healing performance. Overall, such systems are expected to serve as facilitators for better corrosion management of coated steel parts.

钢铁制基础设施在全球范围内的发展速度令人难以置信，对于无数行业的扩张和运营至关重要。钢易受腐蚀破坏的影响，特别是在侵蚀性环境中，并且需要表面保护和有效的腐蚀管理来避免破坏。腐蚀失效是一个严重且代价高昂的问题。在中东地区，腐蚀的直接成本估计约为国内生产总值（GDP）的5％。间接成本要高得多，并且常常是不可预测的。考虑到钢制基础设施的经济重要性，其腐蚀对许多行业（即石油和天然气行业）造成重大问题，并导致非常高的运营支出（OPEX）。因此，涂料行业处于不断的压力中，因为他们需要为最终用户提供最好的涂料，从而确保足够的腐蚀防护并符合环境要求。防腐蚀涂料是钢保护的主要选择，并且如今已成为人们关注的焦点和大量研究工作的重点。原因是环境意识得到了极大的提高，同时伴随着涉及人们安全，资产可持续性，可靠性和环境保护的新立法和法规。这种情况对行业构成了巨大的挑战：如何在满足这些要求的同时保持竞争性解决方案以及可持续的运营和维护成本。智能多功能涂料由于其具有良好的自愈特性，正为解决众多行业中的腐蚀挑战提供可行的解决方案。智能多功能涂料的目标性能受功能类型，颜料（包括智能载体），抑制剂，自修复剂，基质本身和合成路线的影响很大。已经设计了多种防腐颜料并将其用作智能载体以封装/加载各种类型的抑制剂和/或自修复剂。在这篇综述中，我们总结了在许多工业应用中用作智能防腐钢的颜料领域中颜料的最新发展。据报道，各种纳米载体，也称为智能纳米载体，包括无机，有机和混合支架，并用作涂料中的添加剂，以保护不同材料。这篇综述还包括用于评估用智能载体改性的涂料的自愈性能的各种表征技术。此外，值得称赞的进步是，在设计与不同涂料基质相容并能够装载各种化学物质以增强防腐蚀能力和自修复性能的新型智能载体方面，仍需要进步。因此，有必要回顾迄今为止取得的最早进展，以便更好地了解现有战略。关于该主题的简要概述将提供扎实的科学背景，并将作为合成未来新型智能载体以开发具有改进的自愈性能的防腐蚀涂料的基准。总体而言，此类系统有望作为促进涂层钢部件腐蚀管理的促进剂。