In-situ growth of layered double hydroxides nanosheet arrays on graphite fiber as highly dispersed nanofillers for polymer coating with excellent anticorrosion performances

Abstract The design and fabrication of uniform and compact nanocomposite coating with excellent anticorrosion performances are critical in reducing the metal consumption. Herein, we describe a facile and ingenious strategy to obtain a polymer coating that consists of well-dispersed nanosheet fillers via preparing highly ordered layered double hydroxides (LDHs) nanosheet arrays on oxidized graphite fiber (OGF) (as support body and dispersion phase). We found that the incorporation of 0.5 wt.% OGF-LDHs into the polyvinyl butyral (PVB) matrix caused excellent long-term anti-corrosion performance of mild steel in 3.5 wt.% NaCl solution. The uniformly staggered OGF-LDHs acted as a three-dimensional shielding against the corrosive media. The present study, together with a facile and highly efficient method of excellent anticorrosion nanocomposite coating fabrication paved an important step towards real-world applications of anticorrosive coatings using polymer/LDHs composites.