Corrosion protective properties on 2024-T3 of chitosan-modified montmorillonite epoxy coatings based on Ce3+ loading

2024 aluminum alloy has high strength, processing performance, and good damage tolerance performance, but it is prone to intergranular corrosion and pitting. Therefore, the development of corrosion protective coatings is essential for the aluminum alloy. In this paper, cerium ion (Ce 3+ ) was doped into chitosan-modified montmorillonite (Ce-CS-MMT) by ion exchange method, and the corrosion protective performance of Ce-CS-MMT epoxy coating (Ce-CS-MMT/EP) was investigated. The electrochemical analysis of aluminum alloy in cerium-containing solution showed the corrosion inhibition efficiency reached 95.52%. The result indicates the corrosion inhibition effect of cerium-containing solution was better than pure NaCl solution and MMT solution. The corrosion study of the coating illustrates that the protection rate of Ce-CS-MMT/EP reached 95.82%, which was higher than that 91.83% of Ce-MMT/EP. The result indicates the resistance of charge transfer was greater and the better shielding effect for electrolyte corrosion ions than MMT and Ce-MMT epoxy coatings, and the corrosion protective performance was excellent.