On the Development of a Flow-Type Electrochemical Microcell

Abstract

Localized corrosion is one of the most challenging and important fields in corrosion science. While there are a number of methods for studying corrosion at small scales, a majority of these methods involves immersion of a sample into an environment of interest, exposing them for prescribed amount of time, and then analyzing the sample’s surface post-exposure. Methods that have been studied include (i) the use of electrochemical techniques during immersion to understand transient processes that initiate and those that propagate localized corrosion behavior such as scanning reference electrode technique (SRET), and (ii) using electrochemical microcells or scanning droplet cells to perform electrochemical analysis of sample surfaces without the need to immerse an entire sample into an environment. The downside of these techniques is either that the entire sample must be sacrificed for the analysis or that the analysis area is still too large to truly isolate localized corrosion processes. In this study, we demonstrate a novel approach to the development of a flow-type electrochemical microcell that provides the necessary resolution to study localized corrosion while being completely customizable. Additionally, results on various samples will be presented showing the applicability of the system as well as verification of performance. Acknowledgement: This work was performed under the auspices of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) under contract NRC-HQ-84-16-G-0033. Ms. Nancy Hebron-Isreal serves as the program manager.