Modeling of Electrochemical Oxide Film Growth

Ingmar Bösing, Jorg Thöming, Fabio La Mantia

Our civilization would not be possible without stable oxide films on metal surfaces. These oxide films, also known as passive films, can slow down corrosion about three orders of magnitude, and thus passive films enable the use of different metals for construction works, in the medical sector, in the mobility sector and beyond.
Even though, metal oxides play a crucial role in our daily lives, the mechanism behind oxide film growth are not fully understand and there remain several open questions regarding this topic.
To deepen the understanding of oxide film growth we developed a comprehensive model based on the PDM which describes oxide film growth and allows to simulate time depending film growth of the whole polarization behavior of metals, from active dissolution, over the active/passive transition, the passive film growth and transpassive breakdown.

Ingmar Bösing is currently group leader of the electrochemistry group which is part of the chemical process engineering group of the center for environmental science and sustainable technology. He did his PhD at the University of Bremen on corrosion and electrochemical oxide film growth.