The corrosion inhibition ability
of 1-phenyl-2-thiourea (PTU) and
1,3-diisopropyl-2-thiourea (ITU) for mild steel in 1.0 M hydrochloric
was studied by using the potentiodynamic polarization (PDP) curves,
electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS), quantum chemical calculations,
and Monte Carlo simulations. Conditions which influence the capacity
of corrosion inhibition including concentration, structure of thiourea
derivatives, and environment temperature were taken into investigation.
The highest inhibition efficiencies of PTU and ITU are 98.96 and 92.65%
at a concentration of 5 × 10–3 M at 60 °C.
In fact, corrosion inhibition ability of PTU is better than that of
ITU in acidic solution due to the presence of the benzene ring of
PTU. EIS data are very well correlated with PDP results. In addition,
the higher inhibition performance with enhancing temperature and the
values of ΔG0 indicated that PTU
and ITU participate in chemical adsorption on the metal surface. Their
adsorption process on the metal surface follow the Langmuir adsorption
isotherm. Both experimental and theoretical results in this study
are in good agreement.