Adhesion characterization of protective organic coatings by electrochemical impedance spectroscopy

Adhesion is considered in many situations to be a very important property of organic coatings for corrosion protection and much scientific work is devoted both to the study of the mechanism involved in polymer-metal adhesion and to the ways of measuring this property. The large number of experimental methods in existence to obtain information on coating adhesion is an indication of both the scientific and the technological interests in this material science and engineering area, but it is also a consequence of the difficulty in measuring adhesion in a general sense. As a partial alternative to the traditional adhesion measurement approaches for organic coatings, the evaluation of adhesion by electrochemical techniques such as electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) is discussed for different examples. The influences on adhesion of different pretreatments or organic coatings are discussed, considering aluminium, galvanized steel, and stainless steel substrates, and we have shown that the information obtained by using an electrochemical approach can be used for adhesion evaluation, with particular attention to the monitoring of adhesion in an aqueous environment, which is the most detrimental for protective organic coatings.