Reducing the impact of some biological fluids on bioimplants involves the control of surface characteristics by modeling the interface architecture and assembling ecofriendly thin films to retard corrosion. Therefore, a mixture of hydrolyzed keratin peptides (HKER) was investigated as a corrosion inhibitor for 304L stainless steel (SS) in physiological serum (PS), using electrochemical measurements associated with optical microscopy and atomic force microscopy (AFM). The tests, performed for various concentrations of the inhibitor at different temperatures, showed that the inhibition efficiency (IE) decreased with a rise in temperature and proportionally increased with the HKER concentration, reaching its maximum level, around 88%, at 25 °C, with a concentration of 40 g L-1 HKER in physiological serum. The experimental data best fitted the El-Awady adsorption model. The activation parameters (Ea, ∆Ha and ∆Sa) and the adsorption ones (∆Gads0, ∆Hads, ∆Sads) have highlighted a mixed action mechanism of HKER, revealing that physisorption prevails over chemisorption. AFM parameters, such as the average roughness (Ra), root-mean-square roughness (Rq) and maximum peak-to-valley height (Rp-v), confirmed HKER adsorption, indicating that a smoother surface of the 304L stainless steel was obtained when immersed in a PS-containing inhibitor, compared to the surface designed in blank solution, due to the development of a protective layer on the alloy surface.
Keywords: AFM investigation; corrosion inhibition; electrochemical and thermodynamic study; hydrolyzed keratin peptides; stainless steel.