Comprehensive understanding the structure-composition-performance relationships of anti-corrosive coatings from...

The spontaneous corrosion of metals is inevitable and variously anti-corrosive coatings have been proposed to mitigate the corrosion of metallic substrates. Despite great efforts have been made to design high-performance coatings, the structure-composition-performance relationships of the protective coatings are still unclear. The previous works focus on limited design factors and simulation about inhibitors or metallic corrosion, including the modeling, simulation methods, and applications. However, there is still a lack of comprehensive summary of the key factors affecting the performance of anti-corrosive coatings and related simulation calculations. Therefore, it is worthy of summarizing the key aspects affecting the performance and the recent progresses of simulation about anti-corrosive coatings for designing novel high-performance coatings and understanding the protective mechanisms. Hence, in this review, various corrosion types and anti-corrosive coatings are briefly analyzed. Subsequently, the theoretical calculation and simulation approaches for the protective coatings are introduced. Additionally, the key factors in the anti-corrosive coatings are discussed. Furthermore, the detailed analysis and discussion on the recent progresses of theoretical calculations on the anti-corrosive coatings are provided. Finally, the challenges and future directions for the simulation and design of anti-corrosive coatings are highlighted, thus facilitating the understanding of structure-composition-performance relationships of anti-corrosive coatings on metals.