CorroZoom webinar ”Corrosion mechanisms in biological environments”

The next CorroZoom webinar will be on 26 June and will be given by Prof. Yolanda Hedberg from Western University in London, Ontario, Canada. The talk is entitled “Corrosion mechanisms in biological environments.” By “biological environments” Yolanda primarily means the human body.

Please register here (free for all)

Corrosion mechanisms in biological environments

Yolanda Hedberg
Western University

Abstract
Even tiny amounts of corrosion products can harm the human body, a water organism, or food safety. The chemical and physical form of these corrosion products matters in these environments, as certain chemical species, such as Ni2+ or Cr2O42-, are highly toxic to some organisms, and precipitated oxide nanoparticles might trigger neurodegenerative, autoimmune, and other diseases in the human body. Therefore, test methods and conventions common within the corrosion science community must be adjusted to these requirements. Passive dissolution is governed by very different mechanisms than active dissolution. While active dissolution is dominated by metal oxidation, many possible (electro-)chemical and interfacial reactions can play a role in passive dissolution. This talk gives some insight into some of them, including ligand-induced dissolution, the importance of surface and solution complexation, protein adsorption and exchange, and hindered repassivation in tribocorrosion processes. We will also discuss the – still large – discrepancy between clinically observed corrosion of implant materials in humans and that predicted from laboratory tests.

Biography
Yolanda Hedberg is an interdisciplinary and international corrosion scientist with a focus on health and safety aspects of corrosion. She earned her MSc in materials science from Friedrich-Alexander University in Germany in 2009, her PhD in corrosion science from KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden, did her postdoc in environmental and occupational toxicology at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, habilitated in corrosion science towards health aspects at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, and is a Canada Research Chair in corrosion science at Western University in Canada since 2020 (Associate Professor of chemistry since 2024). She was also a visiting professor at Delft University of Technology in the corrosion and electrochemistry group in 2024-2025. She earned many awards, including the ECS Morris Cohen Award, the Nordic Prize for Colloid and Surface Chemistry, and the Canadian Fred Beamish Award for innovations in analytical chemistry, for her research work comprising 112 papers, six book chapters, and two patents, many of which had a direct influence on policy documents, chemical legislation, product development, and changes in experimental setups and clinical practices. She is the Director of an international corrosion training program (CORRECT). She leads a large research group focused on understanding corrosion and surface reactions of relevance for health, environmental, and societal safety. This includes the corrosion of biomedical devices, reactions of corrosion products and metallic nanomaterials in the human body, corrosion protection (coatings) of metals, and chemical hazard assessments of various metal powders and nanoparticles at work. She combines electrochemical methods, interfacial-, solution-, surface chemical methods, and spectroscopic and microscopic tools.