Corrosion inhibitors (CI) have been widely used to protect steel against different kinds of corrosive environments such as acids, brines, carbon dioxide, etc. There are several publications in the literature that detail the synthesis and evaluation of graphene-based CI with variable inhibition rates. In this paper, the recent development of corrosion inhibitors reported in the literature as well as newly developed corrosion inhibitors will be discussed.
The performance of different graphene oxide-based corrosion inhibitors has been investigated over a wide range of parameters. In presence of low CI concentrations i.e. 5 ppm, the corrosion inhibition efficiency was found to be more than 80% in presence of 15% HCl at 25°C. The inhibition efficiency decreased significantly with increasing the temperature.
Also, the preparation of graphene oxide-based nanomaterials from graphite was detailed in this study and the performance of these materials was evaluated as corrosion inhibitors in presence of different acid systems i.e. hydrochloric acid and organic acids. The synthesized materials were characterized using Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM).

As expected, the inhibition efficiency of the tested CI was at high temperatures due to the low corrosion rate at such conditions; however, as the temperature increased the performance decreased to a different extent. At low inhibitor concentrations i.e. 300 ppm, the inhibition efficiency was more than 90%. The findings of this study will lead to further development of CI with improved performance in harsh conditions.