Wettability and anti-corrosion performances of carbon nanotube-silane composite coatings

In this paper, a sol-gel N-propyl-trimethoxy-silane coating filled with different amount of multi-wall carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) was investigated in order to improve the aluminum corrosion resistance. The nanocomposite coating was applied, by drop casting, on AA6061 aluminum alloy substrate. The morphological analysis highlighted that a uniform sol-gel coating was obtained with 0.4 wt. % CNT. Lower or higher nanotube contents lead to the formation of heterogeneities or agglomeration in the coating, respectively. Furthermore, all nanocomposite coatings exhibited effective adhesion to the substrate. In particular, the pull-off strength ranged in 0.82-1.17 MPa. Corrosion protection of the aluminum alloy in NaCl 3.5 wt. % electrolyte (seawater) was significantly improved after CNT addition to the base coating. The stability in electrochemical impedance was observed during three days of immersion in the sodium chloride solution. AS3-CNT2 and AS3-CNT4 batches showed advanced electrochemical stability during immersion tests. Furthermore, interesting results were evidenced in potentiodynamic polarization curves where a decrease of the corrosion current of at least two order of magnitude was observed. Moreover, the breakdown potential was shifted toward noble values. Best results were observed on AS3-CNT6 specimen which exhibited a passivation current density of approximately 1.0 × 10-5 mA/cm2 and a breaking potential of 0.620 V/AgAgClsat.