oa Coatings for corrosion protection: What do we need and where are we

Corrosion is the major cause of components, infra structures and equipment failure over the world, affecting seriously various critical sectors, including water and energy security. The direct cost of corrosion may reach 5% of the GDP in some countries, representing an important economic burden for companies and governments. Just to cite an example, operations and maintenance in offshore infrastructures may represent over 50% of the global cost; out of these 80% are due to corrosion. This means that implementation of effective corrosion management strategies is crucial to decrease energy costs, to increase economic competitiveness, to enhance reliability and security and to achieve a more sustainable economy and healthy environment. Concomitantly, countries and decision makers must pay attention to this crucial issue and the existence of dedicated competence centers gathering synergistic efforts to combat corrosion are a step forward to mitigate the problem and to important economic saves. There are very effective corrosion protection solutions that can be put on place. Amongst these multifunctional protective coatings, based on modern nanotechnology approaches, play a pivotal role. Novel functionalities, such as self-cleaning, superhydrophobicity, anti-fouling and self-healing, have been more and more requested in coatings used for corrosion protection of a multitude of materials in a wide array of industrial applications. This trend has imposed many challenges that have been addressed over the last years and that will continue to evolve over the next years, achieving a very high impact on the market. This presentation overviews the impact of corrosion and highlights the relevance of protective coatings to combat corrosion, emphasizing the latest trends on functional coatings and self-healing approaches and its growing use in conventional and new Hi-tech applications. This lecture reviews recent contributions to the field and will provide a critical discussion, identifying successful paths, trends and challenges, answering to important questions “What do we need and where are we?”