Colorimetric/fluorescent dual channel sensitive coating for early detection of copper alloy corrosion

Herein, we developed a straightforward and effective method to prepare epoxy coating for the early stage corrosion-detection of copper alloy. A selective “turn-on” chemosensor derived from rhodamine B for Cu(II), 3′,6′-Bis(diethylamino)-2-[[(2-hydroxyphenyl)methylene]amino]spiro[1H-isoindole-1,9′-[9H]xanthen]-3(2H)-one (RHS), was obtained via a two-step synthesis of acylation and schiff-base reaction. Both the colorimetric and fluorescent signals of the typical 0.5 wt% sensor-doped coating was observed, which showed that the area prior to corrosion was no significant damage. The concentration of RHS could be reduced to 0.14 wt%, after the zinc-based metal–organic framework (MOF) particle, ZIF-8, applied as a nanocontainer in this coating, and the detection sensitivity was better than the coating with bare RHS. This nondestructive strategy successfully realized early-stage corrosion detection for cupronickel in epoxy coating, which could be potentially used in the corrosion detections for copper alloys.