Adel-Mehraban, F., Raeissi, K., Karimzadeh, F., Pedersen, S. U., Salehzadeh, H. & Daasbjerg, K.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.porgcoat.2021.106185
This paper proposes a novel approach for attaching a graphene oxide (GO) film to a Cu substrate using diazonium chemistry. For this purpose, Cu was covalently modified using electrochemical grafting of p-phenylenebis(diazonium) salt (p-PBDS) followed by immersion in a basic GO suspension. The presence of the p-PBDS interlayer facilitated the assembling of GO in a multilayered film instead of a single layer as for the bare Cu substrate. The corrosion performance of the modified Cu was evaluated in 3.5% NaCl aqueous solution using potentiodynamic polarization and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy. The results inferred that the coupling of GO with p-PBDS interlayer protects effectively Cu against corrosion. Due to a low porosity percentage (0.003%), the corrosion current density is decreased by a factor of ∼ 5. It means that the coupling of GO multilayer with p-PBDS considerably prolongs the diffusion pathways for an oxidant toward the substrate. In this way, the polarization resistance of the film was increased by a factor of ∼ 4.5 (to 10.9 kΩ cm2) compared with that of a bare Cu substrate.