Comment by smusamashah
2 hours ago
> 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.
This is the Cannot be explained bit
A bonus is that manganese is one of the cheapest metals, so this method for increasing the corrosion resistance of stainless steel in salted water and oxidizing conditions is very inexpensive.
> which cannot be explained by current knowledge in corrosion science
The three stooges effect I see. Too many corrosive elements, they stop each other from getting through the door.