Fontana Corrosion Center
December 17, 1997
1997 Annual Fontana Corrosion Center Newsletter
To: Friends and Alumni of the Fontana Corrosion Center
From: Gerald S. Frankel and Rudy Buchheit
As 1997 draws to a close, I want to take the opportunity to inform you of the considerable activities in the Fontana Corrosion Center over the past year. There are new faces, equipment, projects, and accomplishments that IÕm very proud of.
People
First of all, I want to formally announce that we hired a new faculty member in the area of corrosion this year, Rudy Buchheit. You may have noticed that this newsletter is also from Rudy; he will add his comments following mine. Rudy joined us in September from Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque. Rudy hit the ground here running very hard, and has proven to be a very quick study of the intricacies of faculty life. He has several projects going already, and more on the way. He already had the pleasure of teaching MSE 681, our undergraduate corrosion course. I am very excited to have Rudy here, as his presence will really help the FCC grow. RudyÕs experience at Sandia in both fundamental and practical corrosion studies allows him to address a wide range of problems. Furthermore, he is a gifted teacher and mentor and will strenghthen our entire program. Please read RudyÕs comments below, and come meet Rudy if you donÕt already know him at the annual FCC reunion at the NACE CORROSION/98 meeting in San Diego. Details of this gathering are also provided below.
Rudy and I are now installed, along with Susan Smialowska, in the FCC office on the 5th floor of MacQuigg. Susan, by the way, is doing quite well. She actually is off soon for a tour of the Galapagos Islands! Bob Rapp has also been travelling, with a recent visit to Korea to visit some of his old students. While IÕm at it, some of you may be interested to know that Digby Macdonald has decided to leave Penn State to once again join SRI, this time as the head of physical sciences. Digby was here recently as a member of the departmental external advisory committee, which is chaired by Chuck Morin. I had the pleasure of having dinner with Chuck and Roger Staehle earlier this fall one evening in Chicago. Roger seems to be fine, and no less busy.
Also with us on the 5th floor is Cindy Flores, who is helping to keep our lives organized. Please stop in and visit the next time you are in Columbus.
With RudyÕs arrival, the group of corroders is swelling. We now have three post-docs: Akshey Sehgal, who has been with us for almost two years has been joined during the past year by Patrick Schmutz from Switzerland and Eiji Akiyama from Japan. The older crew of graduate students, including Donghui Lu, Jian Zhang, Myna Bisineer, Thodla Ramgopal, and Mohammed Al-Anezi, has been joined by several newer ones: Weilong Zhang, Babu Mamidipally, and Wenping Zhang. Finally, RudyÕs wife Cate Buchheit has joined the FCC as a research associate. Cate, a University of Virginia Chemical Engineering graduate, also worked in the Materials Science Center at Sandia in a research group whose activities focused on sol-gel precursor synthesis and thin film processing. Prior to that, Cate managed a research group developing circuit board manufacturing processes for a small tech-venture company in Albuquerque. CateÕs skills and experience will be key ingredients for successfully managing the increasing research activity level and on-going FCC facilities modifications.
During this past year we said goodbye to Zaizhu Xia, who worked with Susan for about 10 years. Her leaving was a great loss to all of us because Xia was the institutional memory of the FCC - she knew where everything was. However, we are thrilled that she found a job and is not far away in Cleveland.
Technicalities
The FCC is now humming with activities and technical accomplishments. There is not enough space to describe all of the projects, but I thought IÕd mention a few highlights. The MURI program that I described in the last newsletter has now been going for over a year. It has been a wonderful experience to interact with the large and talented group of co-investigators, and we have been learning lots about the localized corrosion of Al alloys and the mechanism of chromate inhibition. One of our activities in that area utilizes a new technique that is an outgrowth of atomic force microscopy. We have been able to map the potential of Al alloys surfaces with a resolution of about 100 nm, which allows us to clearly distinguish, for instance, details of the intermetallic particles in Al alloy 2024-T3. We have also used the AFM to scratch these alloys locally near different intermetallic particles and stimulate the initiation of localized corrosion. In another project, we have developed a paint system that senses underlying corrosion. It changes color in response to pH changes associated with the cathodic reaction, and was highlighted in a recent issue of Science News. One final project to mention is the one that Rudy brought with him from Sandia. He is developing a chromate-free conversion coating based on hydrotalcite. The results are very promising, and have generated lots of interest from various parties.
You may be pleased to know that we have been trying to spruce up the FCC labs recently. It is amazing the extent to which corrosion labs are susceptible to environmental degradation! And whoever originally decided to paint the walls blue should be shot! We have painted all of the labs white, which has really brightened things up. All of the new equipment we have been buying looks much better now. Speaking of which, in the last two years we have on three occasions made use of a special Ohio Board of Regents program that triples the equipment funding from a federal sponsor with matching funds provided by OSU and the State of Ohio. Through these efforts we have raised over $700,000 for equipment. On top of that, Rudy was able to bring almost $100,000 in brand new equipment with him from Sandia. As a result, we are becoming a fully modernized laboratory with numerous computer controlled potentiostats and electrochemical impedance systems. This funding has also allowed the aquisition of the AFM mentioned above. That work has been so successful that another AFM is likely on the way.
Odds and Ends
Please join us during CORROSION/98 in San Diego for the FCC Alumni Reunion Dinner on Tuesday night, March 24, 1998. Make note that arrangements have made for us to gather at 7:00 that evening at Olé Madrid Cafe, 755 Fifth Ave. (ThatÕs olé as in what you shout at a bullfigther, not as in old.) By the way, our chairman Bob Snyder has agreed that the department will pick up the tab for the wine! Bob might even show up that night in a special effort to meet all of you FCC alums. So donÕt miss it! A sign-up sheet will be placed on the appropriate board in San Diego. Please find it on Monday of that week and make your reservation. The last reunion dinner in New Orleans was a smashing success. A special thanks goes to Bob Bartlett for organizing that event. A crowd of 32 FCC alumni and guests gathered for good food and fond memories. I wonÕt soon forget BobÕs Quasimoto imitation!
In the last newletter I mentioned a short course in corrosion that I would be teaching with Barbara Shaw and Howard Pickering at Penn State University. That course was extremely successful, and we plan to repeat it on an annual basis. The next one will be on July 27-31, 1998 at State College, PA. It is a lab-based course covering the fundamentals of corrosion, the phenomenology of corrosion, and experimental techniques to study corrosion. If there is someone in your company who is just starting in the field or only needs a refresher, this may be just the thing. For more information, please contact me.
Make sure to check out the FCC home page at http://www.eng.ohio-state.edu/res/fcc. ItÕs not a real flashy site, but I have included some interesting information. For instance, there is a list of all FCC alumni (at least all that I know of - IÕm still interested in corrections and additions) with email links. There is a detailed description of the research projects in the FCC. There is also the worldÕs only corroderÕs portrait gallery, which contains many shots of famous corroders from around the world, including some new ones in case you havenÕt looked in a while.
Stay tuned for more information regarding an effort that we will soon undertake to honor Roger Staehle and the role he played in building the Fontana Corrosion Center. Ultimately, we would like to establish a chair in his name. This effort will require the help of all of the FCC alumni if it is to be successful. More on that later.
I want to end by wishing you and your family a healthy and prosperous New Year. I hope to hear from each of you, and will disseminate tidings to your fellow alumni.
Jerry Frankel
First, let me say that I am thrilled to be here in the Fontana Corrosion Center. As you can tell from JerryÕs comments, these are truly exciting times for us. The demand for extended life from an aging national infrastructure has made corrosion and corrosion-control issues critical to continued national economic vitality. Against this backdrop, the FCC is expanding upward and outward. This is due to a groundswell of support from the Department, College, and the University and, of course, alumni, as well as sponsorship from federal agencies and corporations. The fact that I was able to join the group this year is evidence of the strength of this support. Now--as you might have guessed, Jerry has been very modest about all this, but the level of support the FCC enjoys was earned because of his efforts. He has worked tirelessly to build an extensive research portfolio which is centered on the key issues of the day for corrosion science. In this business, there is no better foundation than that.
As you know, Cate and I are recent arrivals from Albuquerque, New Mexico. For the past 7 years, I worked in the corrosion research group at Sandia National Laboratories. While there I was fortunate to work on a range of projects including development of new corrosion-resistant coatings for Al alloys, corrosion control for U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve, development of pulsed ion beam technology for processing of metal surfaces with enhanced properties, corrosion during cleaning of microelectronics, environmental cracking of maraging and austentitic stainless steels, among other things!
Prior to that I was a student in the University of Virginia in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering where I did my Ph.D. work under the direction of Professor Glenn Stoner on localized corrosion and SCC of Al-Li alloys. Those of you who are familiar with the corrosion efforts at Sandia and UVa know that they co-exist with strong metallurgy programs. Naturally, I feel right at home here at OSU.
I am slowly re-adjusting to university life. I was able to teach MSE 681, the undergraduate corrosion course, this past quarter. It was the highlight of the fall for me. As IÕve been telling everyone--I learned a lot!
I am also spinning-up my research with the assistance of two graduate students: Wenping Zhang, and Babu Mamidipally. My current research activities include a development project on environmentally acceptable conversion coatings for aluminum alloys. This program is currently DARPA-sponsored, and is carried out in conjunction with the UVa and Clariant Corporation (Charlotte, NC). Our project objective is demonstration of a suitable coating process for the Air Force by 2000. This program grew out of results from my dissertation work and has been on-going at Sandia and UVa. since 1991. A second project, is a new start for me. This will be conducted in association with Sandia and Brookhaven National Labs investigating critical factors in localized corrosion initiation. Our approach for adding fresh insight into this old problem is to "nanoengineer" precisely controlled simulated defects and structures so as to systematically study their role in initiation. We will be using a suite of small length scale fabrication and characterization techniques to precisely define the spatial position, physical extent, and density of simulated defects or heterogeneities known to initiate corrosion. As a result, we will be able to exploit electrochemical and local chemical analyses not previously possible to characterize the initiation process.
Let me close by wishing you all the best for 1998. I look forward to seeing you all at the FCC Alumni Reunion Dinner at CORROSION/98 in San Diego.
Rudy Buchheit