Conducting polymers for corrosion protection: a review

Since the first reported publications about their possible application for corrosion protection, conducting polymers are discussed as promising candidates for a new generation of corrosion control coatings. However, although research has started about three decades ago and certainly about a thousand publications have been published on this topic, their technical application has not yet made its breakthrough. The reason for this is that most coatings based on conducting polymers fail so far under practical corrosion conditions. Reasons will be discussed in this paper, as well as future challenges. As will be shown, conducting redox polymers such as polypyrrole or polyaniline indeed posses a promising potential for intelligent corrosion protection, but up to now this potential has not been explored.