Anticorrosion performance of 4-fluoro phenol functionalized graphene oxide nanocomposite coating on mild steel

The present work is intended to enhance the anticorrosion performance of epoxy resin (EP) coating on mild steel (MS) by incorporating the functionalized graphene oxide as nanofiller material. In this context the graphene oxide (GO) was functionalized using 4- fluoro phenol and the functionalized graphene oxide (FGO) was well characterized by Fourier-transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy, powder X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and Raman spectral studies. The thermal stability of FGO is ascertained by thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and compared with that of GO. The anticorrosion behavior of epoxy (EP) and EP with different wt.% of FGO on MS samples in 3.5% NaCl solution was evaluated by electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) and potentiodynamic polarization techniques. The electrochemical data clearly showed that addition of 0.25 wt.% of FGO into EP drastically increases the corrosion resistance of the coating by 30.46% when compared to pure EP coating. Well dispersed composite coating effectively increases the barrier protection properties by blocking the pathway of the corrosive electrolyte to reach the metal-coating interface.