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Oxygen consumption upon electrochemically polarised zinc

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Abstract

A Pt microelectrode was used to measure the oxygen consumption by redox reduction (ORR) on electrochemically polarised zinc in the redox competition mode. Zinc was polarised in the active and passive state, using a pH 7 and pH 13 solution, respectively. At pH 7, the oxygen concentration measured at a distance of 50 μm from the zinc surface, using the Pt microelectrode, is 15–60 % of the bulk oxygen concentration. Therefore, correspondingly, the oxygen consumption by zinc (due to ORR) is 40–85 % of the bulk oxygen concentration. At pH 13, where zinc undergoes passivation, the oxygen consumption by zinc is 70–80 % of the bulk oxygen concentration. The ORR rate on the surface of zinc passive films (ZnO/Zn(OH)2) is thus significant when compared to that on bare/actively corroding zinc. The influence of the electrode kinetics of zinc corrosion, on oxygen diffusion towards the metal surface has been investigated in this study.

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank the Australian Research Council and the CSIRO for their financial support. Sebastian Thomas is grateful to the Department of Material Science and Engineering (MSE) of the Delft University of Technology (The Netherlands) and to the office of the Monash University International Graduate Research (MIGR) for accommodating his travel study. Lisa Rossrucker (Max Planck Institute, Germany) is also sincerely thanked for her helpful comments on the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Materials Engineering, ARC Centre of Excellence for Design in Light Metals, Monash University, Clayton, VIC, Australia

    S. Thomas & N. Birbilis

  2. CSIRO Material Science and Engineering, Clayton, VIC, Australia

    S. Thomas, I. S. Cole & M. Musameh

  3. CSIRO Process Science and Engineering, Clayton, VIC, Australia

    M. Chen

  4. Research Group Electrochemical and Surface Engineering, Vrije Universiteit Brussels, Brussels, Belgium

    Y. Gonzalez-Garcia & H. Terryn

  5. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands

    Y. Gonzalez-Garcia, J. M. C. Mol & H. Terryn

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  1. S. Thomas
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  2. I. S. Cole
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  3. Y. Gonzalez-Garcia
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Correspondence to S. Thomas.

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Thomas, S., Cole, I.S., Gonzalez-Garcia, Y. et al. Oxygen consumption upon electrochemically polarised zinc. J Appl Electrochem 44, 747–757 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10800-014-0684-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10800-014-0684-0

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