A review—Pitting corrosion initiation investigated by TEM

Passive metals have superior resistance to general corrosion but are susceptible to pitting attack in certain aggressive media, leading to material failure with pronounced adverse economic and safety consequences. Over the past decades, the mechanism of pitting corrosion has attracted corrosion community striving to study. However, the mechanism at the pitting initiation stage is still controversy, due to the difficulty encountered in obtaining precise experimental information with enough spatial resolution. Tracking the accurate sites where initial dissolution occurs as well as the propagation of the dissolution by means of multi-scale characterization is key to deciphering the link between microstructure and corrosion at the atomic scale and clarifying the pitting initiation mechanism. Here, we review our recent progresses in this issue by summarizing the results in three representative materials of 316F, and Super 304H stainless steel as well as 2024-Al alloy, using in situ ex-environmental TEM technique.