DFT Study of Azole Corrosion Inhibitors on Cu2O Model of Oxidized Copper Surfaces: I. Molecule-Surface and Cl-Surface Bonding

The adsorption of three simple azole molecules-imidazole, triazole, and tetrazole-and Cl on various sites of several Cu2O(111)-and Cu2O(110)-type surfaces, including Cu and O vacancies, was characterized using density functional theory (DFT) calculations; the three molecules can be seen as models of azole corrosion inhibitors and Cl as a corrosion activator. Both non-dissociative and dissociative adsorption modes were considered for azole molecules; the latter involves the N-H bond cleavage, hence we also addressed the adsorption of H, which is a co-product of the dissociative adsorption. We find that molecules and Cl bind much stronger to unsaturated Cu sites compared to saturated ones. Dissociated molecules bind considerably stronger to the surface compared to the intact molecules, although even the latter can bind rather strongly to specific unsaturated Cu sites. Bader analysis reveals that binding energies of dissociated molecules at various Cu sites correlate with Bader charges of Cu ions before molecular adsorption, i.e., the smaller the Cu charge, the stronger the molecular bonding. All three azole molecules display similar non-dissociative adsorption energies, but significant difference between them appears for dissociative adsorption mode, i.e., dissociated triazole and tetrazole bind much stronger than dissociated imidazole because the former two can form two strong N-Cu bonds, but imidazole cannot due to its incompatible molecular geometry. Dissociative adsorption is consequently favorable only for triazole and tetrazole, but only at oxygen vacancy sites, where it proceeds barrierlessly (or almost so). This observation may suggest that, for imidazole, only the neutral form, but, for triazole and tetrazole, also their deprotonated forms are the active species for inhibiting corrosion under near neutral pH conditions, where copper surfaces are expected to be oxidized. As for the comparison with the Cl-surface bonding, the calculations indicate that only dissociated triazole and tetrazole bind strong enough to rival the Cl-surface bonds.