Waterborne polythiophene microspheres-containing coatings could offer high protection. 

 

A facile, template-free method to prepare polythiophene microspheres with uniform size and well spherical shape is successfully performed, using anhydrous FeCl2 as catalyst and H2O2 as oxidant by a one-pot chemical oxidation polymerisation.

 

Microspheres show good thermal stability

The structure and morphology of polythiophene nanoparticles is characterised by IR, SEM and TEM. Polythiophene nanostructures exhibit good morphology of microspheres with a very narrow particle size distribution. By fine tuning the reaction conditions, different sizes and nanostructured polythiophene can be obtained. The corrosion protection property of polythiophene microspheres-containing coatings on mild steel is investigated by electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) technique in 3.5 wt% NaCl aqueous solution. 

 

The results indicated that the waterborne polythiophene microspheres-containing coatings (polythiophene content, 0.6 wt%) could offer high protection because the impedance values remained at higher than 1 × 106 Ω cm2 after 360 h. All the results are compared with these of the pure waterborne epoxy coatings on mild steel.