Organic Additives Adsorption at the Steel-Paint Interface and Its Effects on Water Penetration

Numerous additives have been added to paints and coatings to improve adhesion, and prohibit corrosion if the substrate is reactive to its surrounding environs. The adsorbates in this experiment are chosen either due to its existing relevance to the coatings industry, and/or its diversity of functional groups tested against their affinity to the iron surface. This experiment will obtain the structural details of adsorbed organic additive layers on model steel surfaces relative to the steel-paint interface, in particular their role as adhesion promoters and corrosion inhibitors within paint overlayers. In this proposal the additives are to be incorporated into a model polymer/paint layer composed of epoxy, to observe the position and migration of the additives relative to the steel-paint interface in situ, and investigate whether added water plays a role in displacing the additive.