Mesoporous Silica Nanoparticles for Active Corrosion Protection

This work presents the synthesis of monodisperse, mesoporous silica nanoparticles and their application as nanocontainers loaded with corrosion inhibitor (1H-benzotriazole (BTA)) and embedded In hybrid SiOx/ZrOx sol-gel coating for the corrosion protection of aluminum alloy. The developed porous system, of mechanically stable silica nanoparticles exhibits high surface area (similar to 1000 m(2) g(-1)), narrow pore size distribution (d similar to 3 nm), and large pore volume (similar to 1 mL . g(-1)). As a result, a sufficiently high uptake and storage of the corrosion inhibitor in the mesoporous nanocontainers was achieved the successful embedding and homogeneous distribution of the BTA-, loaded monodisperse silica nanocontainers in the passive anticorrosive SiOx/ZrOx film improve the wet corrosion resistance of the aluminum alloy AA2024 in 0.1 M sodium chloride solution. The enhanced corrosion protection, of this newly developed active system in comparison, to the passive sol-gel coating was observed during a simulated corrosion process by the scanning vibrating electrode technique (SVET): These resulting well as the controlled pH dependent release of BTA from the mesoporous silica nanocontainers without additional polyelectrolyte shell, suggest an Inhibitor release triggered by the corrosion process leading to a self-healing effect.