Publications

Localized corrosion of low-carbon steel at the nanoscale

Hayden, Steven C.; Chisholm, Claire; Grudt, Rachael O.; Aguiar, Jeffery A.; Mook, William M.; Kotula, Paul G.; Pilyugina, Tatiana S.; Bufford, Daniel C.; Hattar, Khalid M.; Kucharski, Timothy J.; Taie, Ihsan M.; Ostraat, Michele L.; Jungjohann, Katherine L.

Mitigating corrosion remains a daunting challenge due to localized, nanoscale corrosion events that are poorly understood but are known to cause unpredictable variations in material longevity. Here, the most recent advances in liquid-cell transmission electron microscopy were employed to capture the advent of localized aqueous corrosion in carbon steel at the nanoscale and in real time. Localized corrosion initiated at a triple junction formed by a solitary cementite grain and two ferrite grains and then continued at the electrochemically-active boundary between these two phases. With this analysis, we identified facetted pitting at the phase boundary, uniform corrosion rates from the steel surface, and data that suggest that a re-initiating galvanic corrosion mechanism is possible in this environment. These observations represent an important step toward atomically defining nanoscale corrosion mechanisms, enabling the informed development of next-generation inhibition technologies and the improvement of corrosion predictive models.