Facile fabrication of continuous graphene nanolayer in epoxy coating towards efficient corrosion/wear protection

A combination of graphene and resin has been recognized as a good strategy for anti-corrosion and anti-wear applications. However, the discontinuity of shielding layer and lubricating film restricts the performance enhancements of graphene/epoxy coating. Hence, to maximize the structure and property advantages of graphene, a continuous graphene nanolayer with parallel distribution was fabricated in the epoxy coating by the Marangoni effect. Meanwhile, the introduction of microarc oxidation layer enhances the adhesion strength of epoxy coating and prevents galvanic corrosion of graphene. The multilayer coating exhibits a large enhancement of lowest-frequency impedance value increased by two orders of magnitude and excellent long-term chlorine resistance, with pure epoxy coating as a comparison, attributing to the outstanding barrier effect of multilayer structure and continuous impermeable graphene layer to corrosion media. Meanwhile, its wear rate (6.94 × 10−8 mm3/N·mm) is decreased by 43.11% compared with pure epoxy coating (1.22 × 10−7 mm3/N·mm) due to the graphene layer preventing the counterpart ball from directly contacting the epoxy coating and providing easy shear in the contact interface. Therefore, the as-prepared multilayer coating with excellent anti-corrosion and anti-wear properties has great application prospects in the corrosion and wear fields.