文摘
Density Functional Theory based studies about the inhibition of corrosion affecting the cathode hematite surface by coverage with an methylimidazole-based ionic liquid, IL, were performed. Inhibition performance is tuned through the length of aliphatic chains Cn attached to the imidazolium aromatic ring, where n = 1, ..., 20. Frontier molecular orbitals and energy gaps for single ILs and a pristine (11̅2) hematite surface, the energy difference between ILs and hematite-surface, Fukui indices for the ILs, and adsorption energies and charge transfers for ILs/hematite surface systems were calculated. Results show that adsorption activity is due to the donation/back-donation bonding among the imidazolium aromatic ring of the ILs and the exposed iron atoms of the hematite surface. Dispersive long-range interactions from the ILs alkyl tails allow a closer bonding of the corrosion inhibitor molecules to the hematite surface; the charge transfer between the IL and the hematite is in C18. The optimal alkyl chain size is 18 and this is in full agreement with the reported experimental alkyl chain size that produces high inhibitory properties of related vinylimidazolium ILs.