POURBAIX DIAGRAMS

Introduction
In 1938 Dr. Marcel Pourbaix presented his potential -PH diagrams to illustrate the
thermodynamic state of a metal in dilute aqueous solutions. The advantages of depicting all
the thermodynamic equilibria in a single, unified diagram was immediately evident to
scientists and engineers, especially in corrosion, hydrometallurgy, and electrochemistry.
The axes of the diagram are the key variables that the corrosion engineer can control. The
vertical axis shows the metal-solution potential, which can be changed by varying the
oxidizer concentration in the solution or by applying an electrical potential to the metal. The
horizontal axis shows the PH of the solution. The diagrams are divided into regions of
stability, each labeled with the predominant species present.
For regions where metal ions are stable, the boundaries are usually drawn for equilibrium
concentrations of 10-6M, chosen to show the limits of corrosion where soluble corrosion
products would be barely detectable. However, in a specific corrosion situation, where
solution concentrations are known to be greater than 10-6M or the temperature is not 25°C
(77°F), the diagram can be redrawn to fit the real conditions.