Effect of Fe 3 O 4 ‐Decorated N‐Doped Reduced Graphene Oxide Nanohybrid on the Anticorrosion Performance of Epoxy Composite Coating

Abstract The present study explores the synergistic effect of Fe 3 O 4 and heteroatom doped reduced graphene oxide (rGO) nanohybrid on anti‐corrosion performance of epoxy composite coating. In this connection, Fe 3 O 4 nanoparticles were decorated over nitrogen doped rGO (Fe 3 O 4 ‐NRG) and characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT‐IR), Raman spectroscopy, X‐ray diffraction (XRD), X‐ray Photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), and Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA). This approach to modulating the surface properties of graphene and hence the interaction with polymer matrix were quite distinct from traditional surface functionlization or decoration in a sense that the doped nitrogen atom facilitate the growth of Fe 3 O 4 particles and at the same time augmented the interaction of rGO with polymer matrix. The prepared nanohybrid was dispersed in epoxy matrix through mechanical mixing and coated over mild steel surface via spin coating technique. The potentiodynamic polarization and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) study revealed superior anti‐corrosion performance of Fe 3 O 4 ‐NRG/epoxy coating in 3.5 wt% NaCl solution. The corrosion inhibition was found to improve by ∼ 98.5% with 0.5 wt% loading of Fe 3 O 4 ‐NRG. We believe that this simple solvent free approach to prepare composite coating can be exploit for practical application and thus deserves special attention..