Fig. 2: Inhibitor adsorption sketch considering the isolated and monolayer cases.
From: Molecular modeling applied to corrosion inhibition: a critical review
The blue surface illustrates the metallic slab of the same size in both cases, showing that more molecules are needed to investigate the self-assembled monolayer (SAM) case. The green arrows indicate the empty lateral space, preventing the molecules from interacting with their images in simulations that apply periodic boundary conditions (PBC), for the case of low coverage adsorption.
