Polycrystalline Few-Layer Graphene as a Durable Anticorrosion Film for Copper

ZJ Zhao and TY Hou and NN Wu and SP Jiao and K Zhou and J Yin and JW Suk and X Cui and MF Zhang and SP Li and Y Qu and WG Xie and XB Li and CX Zhao and Y Fu and RD Hong and SS Guo and DQ Lin and WW Cai and WJ Mai and ZT Luo and YT Tian and Y Lai and YY Liu and L Colombo and YF Hao, NANO LETTERS, 21, 1161-1168 (2021).

DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.0c04724

Corrosion of metals in atmospheric environments is a worldwide problem in industry and daily life. Traditional anticorrosion methods including sacrificial anodes or protective coatings have performance limitations. Here, we report atomically thin, polycrystalline few-layer graphene (FLG) grown by chemical vapor deposition as a long-term protective coating film for copper Cu). A six-year old, FLG-protected Cu is visually shiny and detailed material characterizations capture no sign of oxidation. The success of the durable anticorrosion film depends on the misalignment of grain boundaries between adjacent graphene layers. Theoretical calculations further found that corrosive molecules always encounter extremely high energy barrier when diffusing through the FLG layers. Therefore, the FLG is able to prevent the corrosive molecules from reaching the underlying Cu surface. This work highlights the interesting structures of polycrystalline FLG and sheds insight into the atomically thin coatings for various applications.

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