Crossover of interface growth dynamics during corrosion and passivation

TL;DR

This study models corrosion and passivation of metallic surfaces, revealing a crossover in growth dynamics and roughness scaling, with universal features confirmed by simulations applicable to real systems.

Contribution

Introduces a universal scaling model for corrosion and passivation dynamics, capturing crossover behavior and roughness scaling in corrosion fronts.

Findings

Growth velocity decreases as t^{-1/2} after crossover time t_c

Roughness exhibits a transition from KPZ to Laplacian scaling at t_c

Simulation confirms the proposed universal scaling relations

Abstract

We study a model of corrosion and passivation of a metalic surface in contact with a solution using scaling arguments and simulation. The passive layer is porous so that the metal surface is in contact with the solution. The volume excess of the products may suppress the access of the solution to the metal surface, but it is then restored by a diffusion mechanism. A metalic site in contact with the solution or with the porous layer can be passivated with rate p and volume excess diffuses with rate D. At small times, the corrosion front linearly grows in time, but the growth velocity shows a t^{-1/2} decrease after a crossover time of order t_c ~ D/p^2, where the average front height is of order h_c ~ D/p. A universal scaling relation between h/h_c and t/t_c is proposed and confirmed by simulation for 0.00005 <= p <= 0.5 in square lattices. The roughness of the corrosion front shows a crossover from Kardar-Parisi-Zhang scaling to Laplacian growth (diffusion-limited erosion - DLE) at t_c. The amplitudes of roughness scaling are obtained by the same kind of arguments as previously applied to other competitive growth models. The simulation results confirm their validity. Since the proposed model captures the essential ingredients of different corrosion processes, we also expect these universal features to appear in real systems.