A highly corrosion resistant and nondestructive menthol coating strategy for short-term protection of bronzes

Corrosion of bronzes would be highly accelerated after being excavated due to drastic changes of environmental conditions. The short-term protective methods are required to prevent the corrosion before their long-term storage in inert environments, e.g., short-term exposure in air during transportation. In this work, the net-like menthol coating strategy is realized by a specific spraying method. The protective efficacy is investigated by morphological examination, electrochemical measurements, and Fourier infrared spectroscopy, etc. The results show that the protective efficiency of menthol coating increases as its thickness increases. 500 μm menthol coating can effectively protect bronzes from water and Cl− up to 120 days. Furthermore, the menthol coating will sublimate completely without any residual and destroy to the original bronzes. This excellent protective effect lies in the labyrinth effect of the dense structure with disorderly distributed columnar and needle-like menthol.