Following publication, concerns were brought to the attention of the Editorial Office regarding the scientific accuracy of the data presented in the published paper [].
In addition, following publication, concerns were brought to the attention of the Editorial Office regarding the potential duplication of images across several publications.
Adhering to our complaints procedure, an investigation was conducted by the Editorial Office and the Editorial Board, which confirmed a high level of similarity between multiple figures presented in this publication [] and previously published papers [,,,,,,,,,,,], presenting different experimental conditions. This included the following:
- A duplication of the TEM micrographs presented in Figure 6b in [] as Figure 4c in [], Figure 1 in [], Figure 7a in [], Figure 4a in [], Figure 2b in [] and Figure 9c in [].
- A high level of similarity between the TEM micrograph presented Figure 7a in [] and Figure 5a in [].
- A duplication of the SEM micrograph in Figure 9d in [] as Figure 6 in [].
- A duplication of the SEM micrograph in Figure 10 in [] as Figure 8c in [].
- A high level of similarity between the Salt spray images in Figure 16a and Figure 16c in [] and Figure 10a and Figure 10b in []
- A high level of similarity between the SEM micrographs in Figure 11 in [], Figure 7d in [] and Figure 7c in [].
Although the authors provided supporting material, the Editorial Board could not verify the validity or integrity of the presented data. As a result, the Editorial Board has lost confidence in the integrity of the findings and decided to retract this publication [], as per MDPI’s retraction policy (https://www.mdpi.com/ethics#_bookmark30, accessed on 13 March 2025).
This retraction was approved by the Editor-in-Chief of the Coatings journal.
The authors did not provide a comment on this decision.
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