During their research at Université PSL and Sorbonne Université, recent ICMT PhD Huiru Wang and current post-doc Luntao Wang collaborated on a surface analysis investigation that is now published in Corrosion Science, "Adsorption mechanism of quaternary ammonium corrosion inhibitor on carbon steel surface using ToF-SIMS and XPS". In their groundbreaking work, they combined Time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (ToF-SIMS) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) to characterize adsorption phenomena associated with the corrosion inhibitor molecule tetradecylbenzyldimethylammonium on a mild steel surface. They demonstrated that the adsorbed inhibitor surface coverage strongly depends on immersion time and inhibitor concentration, with a maximum as well as uniform coverage is found for sufficiently long exposure times at a critical inhibitor concentration of ca. 25 ppmw. The uniform adsorbed inhibitor layer formed on the surface was determined to mitigate the formation of iron chloride/hydroxide intermediates, thus enhancing the corrosion protection of carbon steel in aggressive environments. The manuscript can be accessed here: (ScienceDirect.com).