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arXiv · 2009.02451

Corrosion Resistance of Sulfur-Selenium Alloy Coatings

Sandhya Susarla·Govind Chilkoor·Yufei Cui·Taib Arif·Thierry Tsafack·Anand Puthirath·Parambath M. Sudeep·Jawahar R. Kalimuthu·Aly Hassan·Samuel Castro-Pardo·Morgan Barnes·Rafael Verduzco·Tobin Filleter·Nikhil Koratkar·Venkataramana Gadhamshetty·Muhammad M Rahman·Pulickel M. Ajayan
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Abstract

Despite decades of research, metallic corrosion remains a long-standing challenge in many engineering applications. Specifically, designing a material that can resist corrosion both in abiotic as well as biotic environments remains elusive. Here we design a lightweight sulfur-selenium (S-Se) alloy with high stiffness and ductility that can serve as a universal corrosion-resistant coating with protection efficiency of ~99.9% for steel in a wide range of diverse environments. S-Se coated mild steel shows a corrosion rate that is 6-7 orders of magnitude lower than bare metal in abiotic (simulated seawater and sodium sulfate solution) and biotic (sulfate-reducing bacterial medium) environments. The coating is strongly adhesive and mechanically robust. We attribute the high corrosion resistance of the alloy in diverse environments to its semi-crystalline, non-porous, anti-microbial, and viscoelastic nature with superior mechanical performance, enabling it to successfully block a variety of diffusing species.

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Sandhya Susarla, Govind Chilkoor, Yufei Cui, Taib Arif, Thierry Tsafack, Anand Puthirath, Parambath M. Sudeep, Jawahar R. Kalimuthu, Aly Hassan, Samuel Castro-Pardo, Morgan Barnes, Rafael Verduzco, Tobin Filleter, Nikhil Koratkar, Venkataramana Gadhamshetty, Muhammad M Rahman, Pulickel M. Ajayan. 2020-09-05. Corrosion Resistance of Sulfur-Selenium Alloy Coatings. https://arxiv.org/abs/2009.02451

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