A Platform Approach for Designing Sustainable Indole Thiosemicarbazone Corrosion Inhibitors with Enhanced Adsorption Properties

With an estimated global cost of $2.5 trillion per year, metal corrosion represents a major challenge across all industrial sectors. Numerous inorganic and organic corrosion inhibitors have been developed, but there are growing concerns about their toxicity and impact on the environment. Here, superior organic corrosion inhibitors based on indole-3-carboxaldehyde, a compound commonly found in the digestive system, and thiosemicarbazones, a safe class of ligands, were designed and studied for mild steel in pH 1 sulfuric acid solutions. Electroanalytical techniques and gravimetric tests revealed inhibition efficiencies as high as 98.9% at 30 °C. Models using Langmuir isotherms gave adsorption equilibrium constants K_ads of 2 to 9 × 10⁴ M^–1 and corresponding Gibbs free energies of adsorption (ΔG_ads) as high as −41.44 kJ mol^–1, indicating their chemisorption. SEM images confirmed the efficacy of these corrosion inhibitors, as surface features showed limited to no changes after tests. Surface analysis by XPS and LC-MS revealed inhibitor concentrations on the order of 0.7 to 1.8 μg cm^–2 for the best compounds, further underlining their performance at low concentrations. Mapping of the surface by MALDI-MS further confirmed the homogeneous coating of the steel surface, with no visible fluctuations in concentrations. As all inhibitors shared the same indole thiosemicarbazone platform, unique structure–performance relationships were drawn from theoretical calculations. Notably, DFT and AIMD explained the differences in performance, highlighting the role of side groups in the distribution of the molecular orbitals and the role of water molecules in enhancing the electronic properties of the organic corrosion inhibitors and promoting their chemisorption.