Comments on the paper “On the nature of inhibition performance of imidazole on iron surface” by J.O. Mendes, E.C. da Silva, A.B. Rocha

Abstract In the above paper [J.O. Mendes, E.C. da Silva, A.B. Rocha, Corros. Sci. 57 (2012) 254–259] Mendes et al. presented results of explicit DFT calculations about adsorption of imidazole and subsequent protective film formation on Fe(100) that is proposed to emerge due to intermolecular C–C bond formation between intact molecules at high coverage. A bold evidence is provided in these Comments that questions the validity of their results. In particular, it is claimed that their adsorption energy magnitudes are way too large by almost an order of magnitude and that the formation of protective film according to their proposed mechanism is unlikely.