Corrosion Protection of Copper in 3% NaCl Solution by the Fabrication of Thiadiazole Monolayer

In this study, 2-mercapto-1,3,4-thiadiazole (2-MT) self-assembled monolayer (SAM) was formed on copper electrode surface and the resulting 2-MT SAM on copper has been characterized using surface analytical techniques such as Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy, energy dispersive X-ray (EDX) analysis, atomic force microscopy (AFM) and contact angle measurement (CA). The existence of N and S in the EDX and FT-IR analysis showed that 2-MT molecules were self-assembled on the copper through N and S by chemisorption which indicates the formation of 2-MT SAM on copper surface. Corrosion protection performance of 2-MT SAM on copper was investigated using potentiodynamic polarization studies (PDS), cyclic voltammetry (CV) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM), respectively. Analysis of both electrochemical and SEM analysis results revealed excellent corrosion protection for the copper substrate.