Pitting Corrosion and the Electrochemical Properties of Metallic Materials

Dear Colleagues,

The identification of suitable materials and production processes constitutes the first step to achieving excellent products in terms of their quality, cost, etc.

Industrial components can be obtained by employing different classes of materials or a combination of them. Metallic materials are one type of materials often used for different engineering components production, a field where mechanical resistance is of primary importance. Even if metals and their alloys in most cases reveal excellent mechanical endurance, unfortunately, they suffer corrosion when exposed to harmful media such as biological liquids, seawater, gas pipelines, etc. Hence, their electrochemical properties strongly affect their performance during their application lifetimes. The phenomenon of corrosion has different consequences on the materials and depend on its real form, they being many types of corrosion.

One type of corrosion is pitting corrosion. This disturbs metals and alloys (both light alloys and Fe-based alloys), usually involves certain areas of the materials and appears to be a very dangerous form of corrosion. Pitting corrosion arises rapidly and can apparently go unnoticed on a medium timeframe, one of the many reasons one can consider it to be amongst the most hazardous forms of corrosion. The most common origins of pitting corrosion are related to the presence of a chemical attack and/or the non-uniform presence and adherence of the protective coating layer (if any), residual stress in the material coming from the manufacturing route, the presence of defect/imperfections on the top of the materials, cracks, etc.

Therefore, in this context, it is very important to measure and understand the electrochemical properties of a metal or alloy before its selection for real-life application.

Potentiodynamic technique, linear polarization, electrochemical impedance, spectroscopy, and cyclic voltammetry are just some of the techniques that assist researchers in completing the characterization of materials from an electrochemical point of view. The optimization of design parameters (quantitative and/or at qualitative level of the alloying constituents) and production steps (time, temperature, pressure, etc.) is a cost-effective and time-saving approach to reduce the time to market. The development of prediction methods of these performances, based on the inputs above, is another aiming in this issue.

This Special Issue aims to collect research articles focusing on the electrochemical specifications of various metallic materials. The main aims of this issue are to (i) focus on the presentation and application of new electrochemical techniques in order to analyze the corrosion resistance, including the pitting corrosion, of metallic materials and (ii) to collect ideas in order to enhance metallic corrosion resistance and (iii) the use of these concepts in optimization processes. Researchers are welcome to contribute both experimental and theoretical articles to this Special Issue.

Prof. Dr. Ildiko Peter
Dr. Lida Kouhalvandi
Guest Editors

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