Natural ligands: Promising ecofriendly alternatives for corrosion protection and plethora of many prospects

Natural ligands are the naturally existing chemicals that are extracted from plants and animals without further modification. For the reason that of their biotic and natural invention, these supplies can be treated as green and sustainable replacements for traditional ligands as they are fairly harmless, nonbioaccumulative and biodegradable. Currently, the growing demands of green chemistry and sustainable development inspire the growth and use of these materials and their chemically modified derivatives. Literature search advises that these materials possess widespread of biological and industrial applications. In the present review, coordination bonding ability of some main series of natural ligands including amino acids, proteins, carbohydrates, polyphenols, flavonoids, fatty acids, oleochemicals, purines and pyrimidines, drugs and phytochemicals in correlation with their corrosion protection effectiveness and with possibility of other uses is reviewed, described and proposed. Herein, the advantages of natural ligands and disadvantages of traditional ligands along with future perspective and research gap is described. Obviously, natural ligands contain many electron rich sites in their molecular structure that help them in binding with metal surface effectively. The natural ligands generally form chelating complexes with the metal atoms or ions. Because of their complex formation ability, these ecofriendly ligands can also be used to replaced traditional toxic ligands being used for other applications such as metal decontamination, ion exchange, wastewater and industrial influents treatments.