A High-Throughput Artificial Pit Technique to Measure Kinetic Parameters for Pitting Stability

A cyclic electrochemical technique was developed which enables rapid, high-throughput extraction of important kinetic parameters from one-dimensional artificial pit (lead-in-pencil) electrode experiments. This approach combined methods for pit initiation and propagation with kinetic measurements at a series of pit depths to measure two key kinetic parameters – the pit stability product under a salt film ( i ⋅ x ) saltfilm and the repassivation potential E rp – from a single experiment. The entire sequence was cycled and automated for efficient, high-volume data collection and analysis for the case of stainless steel in neutral chloride solution. This method offered advantages in the extraction and interpretation of data from a wide range of pit depths, permitting statistical analysis of the kinetic parameters required for determining the critical conditions for pit stability and repassivation.