Imagine a piece of metal—like a car’s body or a natural gas pipeline—protected by a layer of paint or polymer. This outer layer is meant to prevent the metal beneath it from corroding over time. However, if the coating is damaged—through scratches or imperfections—it can expose the metal to environmental elements, accelerating corrosion.
One of the main processes driving this is known as cathodic disbondment, where water and oxygen from the surrounding environment seep through the defect. This allows the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) to occur, producing free radicals that further damage the coating and degrade the metal, author Vijayshankar Dandapani writes in phys.org.
A key factor in determining how long the metal lasts is the rate at which the ORR happens. Unfortunately, tracking the corrosion rate beneath a coating is tough because the crucial interface is hidden from direct access. Traditional methods, like potentiodynamic polarization, try to get...
