Nature-Inspired Strategy for Anticorrosion

Abstract

Materials corrosion is a natural and ubiquitous interfacial process, but is essential to numerous industrial processes. Progress in industrial and material innovations is also marked by developments in search of new solutions to design materials with better anticorrosion activity and longer service lifetime. In particular, recent blossoming in biomimetics has provided remarkable inspirations to design new artificial, passive anticorrosion coatings which are environmentally benign and functional versatile. In this review, the authors first formulate three key design components that underlie the construction of an ideal protective coating, that is, the functional barrier at the coating surface, the transport control of corrosive substances inside the coating, as well as interfacial bonding between the passive coating and the substrate. Then, the authors take a parallel approach to elaborate inspirations from nature and review recent progress in mimicking nature. At last, the authors offer perspectives on the design and development of novel engineered, high-performance anticorrosion coatings.