Robust, Non-Toxic, Corrosion Inhibitor System

Proposed is a robust, non-toxic corrosion inhibitor system consisting of novel, stable colloidal, hybrid polymeric or composite materials that are modified to have functional groups covalently or ionically combined with selected corrosion inhibition groups and are mainly prepared by atom transfer radical polymerization. Chain length and number and type of functional groups can be adjusted. Hydrophobicity and other properties of the polymeric materials can be also modified. These polymers and their mixtures will be designed and formulated into a corrosion inhibiting package (with optimized corrosion inhibitor ratio, concentration and solubility) so that they can be easily applied to metal substrates from water or solvent solutions as pre-treatments, primers or coatings, to provide an innovative, versatile, robust, non-toxic corrosion inhibitor system. This novel inhibitor system can involve more than four-fold synergistic combinations of materials and functions, i.e., (1) polymer network + corrosion inhibitor(s), (2) corrosion inhibitor group A as inorganic oxoanions + group B as rare earth cations + group C as organic anions or compounds, (3) linear (co)polymer structures + core-shell polymer particles, and (4) adherent polymer protective barrier + hydrophobicity (repelling corrosive media), to achieve the desired corrosion inhibiting performances and other hybrid advantages over chromates.