Density Functional Theory and Electrochemical Noise Analysis of Corrosion Inhibition Behavior of N,N '-bis(1-(3,5-dihydroxyphenyl)ethylidene)propane-1,3-diamine on Steel in HCl Solution

Abstract

The inhibition effect of N,N ′-bis(1-(3,5-dihydroxyphenyl)ethylidene)propane-1,3-diamine was studied on steel corrosion in 1 M hydrochloric acid solutions. The density functional theory was applied to calculate quantum chemical parameters such as the highest occupied molecular orbital energy, the lowest unoccupied molecular orbital energy, electron affinity, global electrophilicity index, the fraction of electron transferred, global nucleophilicity index, and Mulliken charges. According to quantum calculation, the diamine compound showed high interaction and effective adsorption on steel surface and high inhibition efficiencies and therefore nitrogen atoms of inhibitor indicated more tendencies for the electrophilic effect in the adsorption. Electrochemical impedance and potentiodynamic polarization indicated that this material has excellent inhibiting features in very low concentrations. The influence of DC trend on the explanation of electrochemical noise data was evaluated by polynomial fitting and the optimum polynomial order m = 4 was obtained. Noise resistance and the inhibition efficiency was calculated and compared in different methods. The theory of shot noise in frequency domain was used to obtain the electrochemical event charge. The corroded surface of steel in the absence and existence of thiazole compound was studied by Atomic force microscopy.