Electrochemical impedance measurements in an intelligent database of corrosion

October 2013 – December 2013

Corrosion is a common phenomenon that causes detrimental economic and social consequences. An obvious way of corrosion protection is to prevent the metal surface from being exposed to a corrosive environment by application of one or several coatings, usually conversion coatings. Conversion layers are formed by a reaction (anodizing, phosphating, chromatation) between the metal surface and a solution. Recently more ecological alternatives for these processes were introduced, but the use of these new alternatives is currently impeded due to a lack of objective data about their corrosion. A prevailing measurement technique for corrosion detection is electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS). A disadvantage is that the obtained EIS-spectra are difficult to interpret.
This project wants to make the impedance technique widely accessible to the industry by developing an intelligent database for corrosion. Within this framework the purpose of this work is twofolded. The first aim is to  use this ORP-EIS technique as a method for coating inspection, coating optimalisation and coating selection. For example, an attempt will be made to judge the corrosion protection of alternative conversion coatings.
The second goal of this work is the integration of extensive series of these experiments in a database with an intelligent search engine. The valorisation of this work contains the development of a commercial software tool.