ME Seminar - Demyth mechanisms of microbial corrosion to design microbial corrosion-resistant materials

Guest Speaker: Prof. XU Dake

School of Materials Science and Engineering
Northeastern University

Prof. XU is currently a full professor in School of Materials Science and Engineering, Northeastern University, China. He received his PhD degree from the Institute for Corrosion and Multiphase Technology, Ohio University in 2013, and he won the National Science Fund for Outstanding Young Scholars in 2024. His research interests fall in mechanism, detection, and mitigation of microbiologically influenced corrosion and antibacterial materials, which is an interdisciplinary research of material science, corrosion and microbiology. He is a fellow of International Association of Advanced Materials (IAAM). He has published more than 130 peer-reviewed journal articles, and he served as editors or guest editors for Journal of Materials Science & Technology, NPJ Material degradation, Bioelectrochemistry and other SCI indexed journals. He recently published a paper named “Microbially mediated metal corrosion” in Nature review microbiology, which was selected as the cover. His recent works regarding the mechanism of microbial corrosion and anti-microbial corrosion material/coating were published in Angewandte Chemie-international Edition, Advanced Materials and Advanced Functional Materials.

Microbiologically influenced corrosion (MIC) is a form of corrosion where the electrochemical reactions are mainly accelerated by microorganisms or their metabolic activities. The mitigation of MIC has gained serious attention from academia and industry due to the severity and widespread occurrence of this form of corrosion. A mechanistic understanding is required to develop mitigation strategies. We found that the attached biofilm was mainly responsible for the microbial corrosion. We demonstrated from the genetic level that the biofilm can uptake electrons from metal matrix via extracellular electron transfer, pointing out the targets for MIC mitigation. Our in-depth MIC mechanism understanding guided us to design MIC-resistant materials and anti-fouling coatings. Our better understanding of the MIC mechanisms also sheds light on the novel methods for detection and monitoring of MIC, which is a worldwide knotty concern for field applications. We can provide stable and accurate sensors for detection and monitoring of MIC caused by electroactive microorganisms via optical fiber-based technology.