Synthesis and potential applications of some thiazoles as corrosion inhibitor of copper in 1 M HCl: Experimental and theoretical studies

[Display omitted] •Synthesis and evaluations of corrosion protection of three thiazoles.•The studied thiazoles act as effective copper corrosion inhibitor.•Dimerization of ATP inhibitor to TATD did not cause better corrosion inhibition.•The results showed the existence of both chemisorption and physisorption processes. Thiazoles continue to attend in synthetic organic chemistry due to their wide applications in the development of corrosion inhibitors. This study presents synthesis and corrosion inhibition ability of three thiazoles)4-(2-aminothiazole-4-yl) phenol (ATP), 4-phenylthiazole-2-amine (PTA) and 4,4′-(thiobis(2-aminothiazole-5,4-diyl)) diphenol (TATD) on the copper surface, where TATD is a dimer form of ATP. The inhibition efficiencies were evaluated by potentiodynamic polarization, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS), atomic force microscopy (AFM) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) in various concentrations of thiazoles containing 1 M HCl solution. Computational studies (density functional theory (DFT) and molecular dynamics (MD) simulation) were also performed. The corrosion inhibition efficiencies of these compounds at optimum concentration were about 90%, indicating that ATP, PTA and TATD could be employed as effective corrosion inhibitors. Comparing the corrosion inhibition efficiencies of monomer ATP and dimer form TATD of thiazole also indicated that dimerization of inhibitor did not cause better interaction with the copper surface and more efficiency. The adsorption of inhibitors could be successfully described by the Langmuir adsorption isotherm.