Factors affecting barrier performance of composite anti-corrosion coatings prepared by using electrochemically exfoliated few-layer graphene as filler

The electro-exfoliated few-layer graphene (FLG) sheet and epoxy composite systems were studied as model composite coatings. Increasing the loading up to 1 wt% increased the corrosion resistance of the coating by similar to 20 times, hardness by 30%, elastic modulus by 35% as compared to neat epoxy coating. At a fixed FLG loading, the above mentioned parameters strongly varied with the homogenization time. The mean 'agglomerates' size of FLG in the composite coating decreased from 17.4 mu m to 10.6 mu m for increasing the homogenization from 10 to 60 min. Correspondingly, mechanical properties of the composite coatings decreased and anticorrosion property increased.