In-situ reduced graphene oxide-polyvinyl alcohol composite coatings as protective layers on magnesium substrates

A simple and feasible method was developed to fabricate in-situ reduced graphene oxide-polyvinyl alcohol composite(GO-PVA) coatings as protective layers on magnesium substrates.Polyvinyl alcohol was used as an in-situ reductant to transform GO into reduced GO.Contiguous and uniform GO-PVA coatings were prepared on magnesium substrates by dip-coating method,and were further thermally treated at 120 ℃ under ambient condition to obtain in-situ reduced GO-PVA coatings.Owing to the reducing effect of PVA.thermal treatment at low temperature led to effective in-situ reduction of GO as confirmed by XRD,Raman,FTIR and XPS tests.The corrosion current density of magnesium substrates in 3.5 wt%NaCl solution could be lowered to its 1/25 when using in-situ reduced GO-PVA coatings as protective layers.