A comprehensive assessment of carbon steel corrosion inhibition by 1,10-phenanthroline in the acidic environment: insights from experimental and computational studies

Abstract

1,10-Phenanthroline (PHN) is a nitrogen-containing heterocyclic organic compound that is widely used in a variety of applications, including chemosensors, biological studies, and pharmaceuticals, which promotes its use as an organic inhibitor to reduce corrosion of steel in acidic solution. In this regard, the inhibition ability of PHN was examined for carbon steel (C48) in a 1.0 M HCl environment by performing electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS), potentiodynamic polarization (PDP), mass loss, and thermometric/kinetic. Additionally, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) was used to examine the surface morphology of C48 immersed in 1.0 M HCl protected with our inhibitor. According to the PDP tests, increasing the PHN concentration resulted in an improvement in corrosion inhibition efficiency. Besides, the maximum corrosion inhibition efficiency is about 90% at 328 K. Furthermore, the PDP assessments demonstrated that PHN functions as a mixed-type inhibitor. The adsorption analysis reveals that our title molecule mechanism is due to physical–chemical adsorption, as predicted by the Frumkin, Temkin, Freundlich, and Langmuir isotherms. The SEM technique exhibited that the corrosion barrier occurs due to the adsorption of the PHN compound through the metal/1.0 M HCl interface. In addition, the computational investigations based on a quantum calculation using density functional theory (DFT), reactivity (QTAIM, ELF, and LOL), and molecular-scale by Monte Carlo (MC) simulations confirmed the experimental results by providing further insight into the mode of adsorption of PHN on the metal surface, thus forming a protective film against corrosion on the C48 surface.