Long-Term Anti-Corrosion Performance of a Conducting Polymer-Based Coating System for Steels

The long-term durability of a two-layer coating system was evaluated by two accelerated corrosion tests, i.e., the ASTM B117 Salt spray test and the ASTM D5894 Cyclic salt fog/UV exposure test, and a series of surface analyses. The coating system was developed for protecting structural steels from corrosion, including a functional primer made of intrinsically conducting polymer (ICP) and a protective topcoat. The standard pull-off test per ASTM D4541 was employed for characterizing the adhesion of the coating systems to substrate, aided by visual examination of the surface deterioration of the samples. The ICP-based systems demonstrated superior long-term anti-corrosion capacity when a polyurethane topcoat is used. The ICP-based primer made of a waterborne epoxy gave poorer anti-corrosion performance than the ICP-based primer made of regular non-waterborne epoxy, which can be attributed to the lower adhesion the waterborne epoxy demonstrated to the substrate surface. The zinc-rich control systems showed good anti-corrosion durability; however, they may produce excessive oxidative products of zinc to cause coating delamination. Based on the test results, the two-layer coating system consisting of an ICP-based primer and a polyurethane topcoat outperforms the conventional zinc-rich coating systems for corrosion protection of steels.