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arXiv · 2201.12964

The Growth of Passive Membranes: Evidence from Ti and Like Metals

Weiwei Lao·Qiaojie Luo·Ying Huang·Haixu Zhong·Chaoqian Lou·Xuliang Deng·Xiufang Wen·Xiaodong Li
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Abstract

Current contradictory understanding of passivation comes from overly-complex passive models, defective characterization and misplaced theoretical approaches. From brand-new experimentation, we find that a Ti passive membrane has spatiotemporally-ordered macrostructure. At the start, a thermodynamically-stable chemisorbed Ti-O monolayer is immediately formed to inactivate the outmost Ti atoms and shield direct reaction of environmental oxygens on metallic matrix, and then an underneath TiOx@Ti ceramet-like non-equilibrium gradient oxide layer rapidly forms. The two layers work synergistically to keep the macro-ordered passive membrane growing slowly via non-linear mechanism of incremental oxidation damping, thus effecting passivation. These findings disprove "the adsorption theory of passivation" and "the theory of passivity film" and inform a new theory we call "passivation theory of incremental oxidation damping".

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Weiwei Lao, Qiaojie Luo, Ying Huang, Haixu Zhong, Chaoqian Lou, Xuliang Deng, Xiufang Wen, Xiaodong Li. 2022-01-31. The Growth of Passive Membranes: Evidence from Ti and Like Metals. https://arxiv.org/abs/2201.12964

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