Kinetics of adsorption of poly(vinylimidazole) (PVI) onto copper surfaces investigated by quartz crystal microbalance studies

Organic corrosion inhibitors offer a huge potential of lowering product cost and manufacturing complexity in printed circuit board industry. Up to now, there is no reliable and fast method available to classify materials according to their ability to prevent copper from corrosion based on kinetic data of adsorption. We investigated the potential of the recently presented fast impedance-scanning quartz microbalance (FIS-QCM) to perform such studies. We selected poly(vinylimidazole) (PVI) that is known for its excellent ability to prevent copper from corrosion. However, kinetics and free energy of adsorption of PVI were never investigated. This paper presents the results of these studies. Reliable kinetic data were obtained, and the measurements show also the excellent frequency stability of this device that enables the detection of very small changes in resonance behaviour of the sensor quartz crystal, even below 1 Hz.