Surface investigation by electrochemical methods and application of chaos theory and fractal geometry

The present study has considered the application of the noise analysis and fractal geometry as a promising dynamic method for exploiting the corrosion mechanism of the stainless steel 304 that is immersed in different concentrations of FeCl3. The fractal dimension calculated from the electrochemical noise technique has a good correlation with the surface fractal dimension obtained by electrochemical impedance spectroscopy and scanning electron microscopy results. The complexity of system increases by divergence of Electrochemical Potential noise fractal dimension from 1.5 value and also the roughness of surface increases by an increase in surface fractal dimension. As the concentration of FeCl3 increases (0.001 M, 0.01 M and 0.1 M) the value of Electrochemical Potential noise fractal dimension diverges from 1.5 value (1.57, 1.33 and 1.01 respectively) and the value of surface fractal dimension increases (2.107, 2.425 and 2.756 for impedance results and 2.073, 2.425 and 2.672 for scanning electron microscopy images). These results show that the complexity of system and roughness of the surface increases by an increase in concentration of FeCl3. The present study has shown that chaos and noise analysis are effective methods for the study of the mechanism of the corrosion process.