Copper is commonly regarded to be immune to corrosion in deaerated deionized electrolytes. The present work shows that, in the absence of hydrogen, copper will corrode on the order of 1 nm/day in deionized water with an O 2 concentration on the order of, or less than, 1 ppb. While a corrosion rate of this magnitude can normally be neglected, it may be catastrophic for nanoscale copper structures utilized in emerging applications to enhance energy transport at the solid-electrolyte interface, such as in cooling advance electronics. This conclusion is supported by a set of experimental and analytical studies that encompass impedance spectroscopy, slow-scan linear sweep voltammetry, thermodynamic calculations for the environment under study, and kinetic simulations. The studies provide a comprehensive insight on details of the corrosion mechanism for copper in deaerated water.

The synthesis of essentially random methacrylic acid (MAA) copolymers is reported. Precursor copolymers of styrene (ST) or 2,3-dimethylbutadiene (DMB) and a tert-butyldimethylsilylmethacrylate comonomer were synthesized initially by free-radical solution polymerization, followed by silyl deprotection to yield the desired amorphous MAA copolymers. The infrared characterization of these copolymers is discussed with particular emphasis placed on the effect of temperature and composition on hydrogen bonding, the formation of anhydrides at elevated temperatures, and quantitative measurements, leading to an estimation of the dimensionless equilibrium constant describing the self-association of MAA moieties. Comparisons are made to low molecular weight analogues and previous studies on ethylene-co-methacrylic acid copolymers. An important experimental finding is that the number of hydrogen-bonded carboxylic acid dimers that are formed at equilibrium is a strong function of chain stiffness.

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This response is provided to comments by Spahiu and Puigdomenech criticizing the conclusion of Cleveland et al. [J. Electrochem. Soc., 161, C107 (2014)] that, in the absence of hydrogen, copper will corrode in deaerated deionized water. Spahiu and Puigdomenech base their critique on anomalies in the Pourbaix diagram presented by Cleveland et al., on concerns that the experimental system was inadequately deaerated, and on differences between the corrosion rates predicted in our work and in the work of Hultquist et al.

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