The first layer is the familiar Cr2O3 based passive film. Then, at around ~720 mV, a manganese based layer forms on top of the chromium based layer. This second shield helps protect the steel in chloride containing environments up to an ultra high potential of 1700 mV.

That is what makes the finding so striking. Manganese is usually not viewed as a friend of stainless steel corrosion resistance. In fact, the prevailing view has been that manganese weakens it.

"Initially, we did not believe it because the prevailing view is that Mn impairs the corrosion resistance of stainless steel. Mn-based passivation is a counter-intuitive discovery, which cannot be explained by current knowledge in corrosion science. However, when numerous atomic-level results were presented, we were convinced. Beyond being surprised, we cannot wait to exploit the mechanism," said Dr. Kaiping Yu, the first author of the article, whose PhD is supervised by Professor Huang.

They know how to make it work. The currently unexplainable part is why because manganese is the key to this working. Manganese usually doesn’t protect stainless steel from corrosion but it is when layered over the chromium based layer.

“Cannot be explained” – New ultra stainless steel quietly stuns researchers

a genie came and conjured up this material and it can't be explained. wait no. we made it and know everything about making it.

You mean rust in the water.

Badum-tsh! 😄

storage and transport is the bigger issue, along with H being a GHG so the inevitable fugitive emissions are a huge issue.

It's a stupid thing to do, but that's why we'll do it anyway.

If you're aware of electrocorrosion issues in salty electrolytes and ever looked into platinated titanium electrodes it is a very neat result. Hydrogen directly from seawater in a cheap stable cell is huge.

First of all, conversion from electricity to hydrogen achieves 60–80% system efficiency which isn't even the theoretical maximum. Meanwhile, round-trip efficiency of P2P energy storage system with micro gas turbines between 22% and 29%.. It's expected that efficiency could get to around 40% in the next decade as well.

So, I don't think that's actually a huge issue. The main problem with hydrogen for stuff like planes is low energy density. But that's not an issue for stuff like ground batteries which are used to capture energy from wind and solar. This also works for transport like trucks. And a big advantage for hydrogen is that it doesn't need large amounts of rare earths as you do for traditional batteries.

China is taking a shotgun approach to their energy mix where they try a whole bunch of different things, and then see where different methods of energy production and storage make the most sense.