title: Enhanced room-temperature corrosion of copper in the presence of graphene.
abstract: This paper reports the enhancement of long-term oxidation of copper at room temperature by a graphene coating. Previous studies showed that graphene is an effective anticorrosion barrier against short-term thermal and electrochemical oxidation of metals. Here, we show that a graphene coating can, on the contrary, accelerate long-term oxidation of an underlying copper substrate in ambient atmosphere at room temperature. After 6 months of exposure in air, both Raman spectroscopy and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy indicated that graphene-coated copper foil had a higher degree of oxidation than uncoated foil, although X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy showed that the surface concentration of Cu(2+) was higher for the uncoated sample. In addition, we observed that the oxidation of graphene-coated copper foil was not homogeneous and occurred within micrometer-sized domains. The corrosion enhancement effect of graphene was attributed to its ability to promote electrochemical corrosion of copper.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15260, United States.
authors.forename: Feng
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.forename: Zhiting
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Ganesh J
authors.initials: GJ
authors.lastname: Shenoy
authors.forename: Lei
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Haitao
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Liu