Chapter 24 - Recent Advances in Nanocomposite Coatings for Corrosion Protection Applications

Abstract

Nanocomposite coatings have shown increasing interest in recent years in many strategic industries such as automotive, aerospace, petroleum, and electronics. Nanocomposite coatings are engineered to provide attractive and cost-effective functional surface coatings with superior properties for anticorrosion, antimicrobial, antifogging, and adhesive applications. The unique characteristics of nanocomposite coatings include enhanced mechanical strength, weight reduction, improved barrier properties, and increased heat, wear, and scratch resistance for lifelong performance. Compared to the traditional anticorrosive composite coatings, the superior performance of their nanocomposite counterparts is mostly attributed to the improved morphology with nanoscale phase-separated domains. The simplest approach for the preparation of anticorrosive nanocomposite coatings is through the direct mixing of inorganic nanoparticle additives with the organic coating matrix. However, the recent advanced nanotechnologies are based on designing and functionalization of nanoparticles prior to their incorporation into the nanocomposite coatings to enable them to provide effective and continuous corrosion protection functionality. These include self-healing nanocomposite coatings, stimuli-responsive layer-by-layer nanocomposite coatings, organic-inorganic hybrid nanocomposite coatings, electroactive nanocomposite coatings based on electrically conductive polymers, and various carbon nanostructures. This chapter highlights these emerging nanotechnologies and presents the most recent achievements in this area.