Emilio Peña spoke with President Martinelli, President of Panama, about the National Corrosion Center at a special UTMB/ University of Panama accord signing on October 28, 2009. Pictured from left to right: Emilio Peña, President Martinelli, Harris County Attorney Vince Ryan and Houston City Councilmember Mike Sullivan.

Scientists at The National Corrosion Center  have unveiled a one-of-a-kind microscope  that lets them zoom in for the closest look anyone has ever gotten of corrosion in action.

	TOMMY LAVERGNE
	Dr. Rolf Arvidson, left, and Dr. Andreas Lüttge demonstrate the new ZeMapper interferometer.

“There is no other instrument like this in the world,” said NCC director Andreas Lüttge at the Oct. 14 Rice University open house for the center’s new interferometry laboratory. “With this interferometer we can measure corrosion quantitatively before most techniques can even see it,” said Lüttge, professor of Earth science and of chemistry.

The most costly and common form of corrosion is rust. Every bridge, dam or building that contains iron or steel is potentially subject to damage from corrosion. And corrosion starts when atoms of iron react with oxygen atoms to form iron oxide.

“Corrosion is governed at the molecular and atomic level,” said NCC geochemist Rolf Arvidson, senior research scientist in Earth science. Arvidson said scientists need to track reaction rates and follow the progress of reactions at the nanometer-scale if they are to fully understand how corrosion begins and spreads.

The lab’s newest addition is a ZeMapper interferometer built and customized for Rice researchers by Zemetrics Inc.

“It helps to bring those small details into focus by utilizing super-resolution techniques in combination with interferometry,” said University of Göttingen scientist Cornelius Fischer, an adjunct assistant professor of Earth science at Rice. He helped develop techniques used with the new microscope during a Humbolt Foundation fellowship at Rice in 2006-2008.

Interferometers work by probing samples with light in a way that allows them to resolve small features in high resolution. Thanks to a patented technique developed by Lüttge’s group and by Rice Earth science professor Dale Sawyer over the past five years, Rice’s interferometer has even greater resolution. The technique involves shifting the sample in minute, subpixel increments. A new dataset is acquired after each shift, and software developed at Rice combines the data to resolve details at a lateral scale on the order of tens of nanometers and at a vertical resolution of less than an angstrom. By viewing the images in sequence, the machine can even create videos that show and measure corrosion occurring at the nanometer scale.

The patented interferometer technology may eventually be used in biomedical, environmental and material science applications, but the NCC team’s immediate plan is to answer fundamental questions about how corrosion works at the molecular scale. Ulitmately, the team hopes to set the stage for the discovery of new corrosion prevention and mitigation technologies.

“It’s exciting to measure things at the atomic scale and to create pretty movies, but ultimately society and policymakers want to know, What do we design for? What do we need to plan for?” said Rice’s Emil Pena, executive director of both the NCC and the Energy & Environmental Systems Institute. “Translating what we learn at the small scale to the larger world is an important part of this process.”

The NCC’s new interferometer was purchased with funds from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and CORPRO Systems.

Pictured, Rice’s Dr. Enrique Barrera and Emil Peña,
with Jesus Soto (El Paso Corp.), attend the reception
unveiling the interferometer.

Dr. Ken Nealson, Wrigley Chair in Environmental Studies and Professor of Earth Sciences and Biological Sciences, spoke to the National Corrosion Center Advisory Board on September 18, 2009. Dr. Nealson reviewed his pioneering work with geobiology, Shewanella oneidensis, and the tie in to corrosion (via electromicrobiology).

From the USC faculty profile:

Professor Nealson is one of the pioneers of the field of modern geobiology – an area of science that tackles the still largely unexplored domain where the processes and chemistry of life intersect with the planet’s mineral and metal chemistry. In his early work as a marine microbiologist, Nealson discovered quorum sensing, the phenomenon in which microbial communities create light. As one of the first to recognize the importance of microorganisms in catalyzing redox reactions in the environment, he has led the development of tools to study these organisms. Nealson’s techniques, used to study microbial populations through genetic identification, are now considered standard in analyzing microbes found in biofilms. On a much larger scale, Nealson has studied the cycling of such minerals as iron and manganese, revealing the key role of microorganisms in these biogeochemical processes. More recently, he has turned to the understanding of how life can function in extreme environments, and he is directing efforts at NASA to search for life and evidence of ancient life in the solar system. Recent work has involved the systems biology and comparative genomics of a group of organisms in the genus Shewanella, as well as adapting his laboratory work to the application of using microbes to produce energy from waste materials in microbial fuel cells.

Dr. Nealson’s awards include:

• Endowed Chair, Wrigley Chair in Environmental Studies, 9/1/2001-
• Proctor and Gamble Medal in Environmental Microbiology, 5/2003
• Distinguished Visiting Researcher Award presented by Joint
• Oceanographic Institution, 1996
• Fellow (or Equivalent) of National Society in Discipline, American Academy of Microbiology, 1994
• Guggenheim Fellowship Recipient, 1982

Impedance spectroscopy is an extremely powerful non-destructive investigative technique that can obtain essential information about interfacial and bulk material parameters through the use of low energy, time varying electrical excitation. When applied to an electrochemical system, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) can provide information on reaction parameters, corrosion rates, oxide characteristics and integrity, surface porosity, coating integrity, mass transport, and many other electrode/interface characteristics. EIS is possibly one of the most powerful methods available in electrochemistry today and is utilized in research and development in essentially every technical sector, e.g., transportation and infrastructure, batteries and fuel cells, medicine, among many others. However, effective utilization of this method has been hindered by the lack of a comprehensive and cohesive explanation of the theory, measurement, and analysis techniques. This course on EIS has been developed to fill this void.

This short course, now in its 21st year, was first taught in 1988 in Charlottesville, Virginia. It has recently had the tremendous fortune of moving to the vibrant and technologically rich city of Houston, Texas. Please read more about our course on this website, or contact us either by e-mail or telephone.

The National Corrosion Center has signed or anticipates pending signatures on MOUs and general membership agreements with several partners including: NACE International, City of Knowledge-Panama, Houston Port Authority, University of Arkansas, Alamo Protechtacoat, HHK Technologies, Risavika Gas Center-Stavenger, and UDLAP (Universidad de las Américas Puebla).

Creation of a regional  NCC Corrosion Lab and Training Center in Panama’s Ciudad del Saber (City of Knowledge) has been approved.  NCC Director Andreas Lüttge and Executive Director Emil Peña will visit in April 2009 to discuss next steps. City of Knowledge is a government sponsored cluster of academic organizations, technology companies and non-governmental organizations located across the Panama Canal’s Miraflores locks in what used to be US. Army South headquarters, Fort Clayton.

NCC,  RPSEA and  NACE International will co-sponsor Protecting the Nation’s Infrastructure into the 21st Century at Rice University in Fall 2009. Dr. Norman Hackerman, an internationally recognized electrochemist, was President of both the University of Texas-Austin and Rice University.  Co-chaired by former Texas Governor Mark White and Nobel Laureate Dr. Robert Curl, the symposium will explore many aspects of the degradation of public infrastructure through the ravages of corrosion. Details to follow. The symposium is a follow-up to 2008’s  The Corroding of America’s Infrastructure”.

NCC Executive Director  Emil Peña updated the NACE Research Committee on NCC activities and progress at the NACE 2009 Conference and Expo in Atlanta, March 25.

Dr. Andreas Lüttge, Rice University Professor of Earth Science and Chemistry, has been appointed Director of the NCC with the enthusiastic support of  Dean of Engineering  Dr. Sallie Keller-McNulty and Vice Provost of Research Dr. James Coleman. Dr. Lüttge also chairs the NCC’s Technical Committee. NCC’s acting director Dr. Walter Chapman will continue on the Center’s Advisory Board and as Faculty Director of EESI.

It’s corrosion, and it’s a problem that costs the United States an estimated $276 billion a year. To fight this nemesis of the nation’s infrastructure, Rice has established the National Corrosion Center, which also involves NACE International, an association of more than 20,000 scientists, engineers and technicians concerned with corrosion prevention and control.

Read more in Rice Magazine at: http://www.rice.edu/ricemagazine/2009/2009_Issue2/sallyport/CorrosionControl.html