Current contradictory understanding of passivation comes from overly-complex passive models, defective characterization and misplaced theoretical approaches. From brand-new experimentation, we find that a Ti passive membrane has spatiotemporally-ordered macrostructure. At the start, a thermodynamically-stable chemisorbed Ti-O monolayer is immediately formed to inactivate the outmost Ti atoms and shield direct reaction of environmental oxygens on metallic matrix, and then an underneath TiOx@Ti ceramet-like non-equilibrium gradient oxide layer rapidly forms. The two layers work synergistically to keep the macro-ordered passive membrane growing slowly via non-linear mechanism of incremental oxidation damping, thus effecting passivation. These findings disprove "the adsorption theory of passivation" and "the theory of passivity film" and inform a new theory we call "passivation theory of incremental oxidation damping".
College of Chemical Engineering, Zhejiang University of Technology（浙江工业大学化学工程学院）；School of Physical Science and Technology, Ningbo University（宁波大学物理科学与技术学院）；Ningbo Institute of Materials Technology and Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院宁波材料技术与工程研究所）；Institute of Vegetables, Ningbo Academy of Agricultural Sciences（宁波市农业科学院蔬菜研究所）
Imperial College London（帝国理工学院）；UBC（不列颠哥伦比亚大学）；University of Nottingham（诺丁汉大学）；University College London（伦敦大学学院）；London Centre for Nanotechnology（伦敦纳米技术中心）；Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory（劳伦斯伯克利国家实验室）；Molecular Foundry（分子发现中心）
Tuning exciton emission via ferroelectric polarization at a heterogeneous interface between a monolayer transition metal dichalcogenide and a perovskite oxide membrane
Full Electrical Switching of a Freestanding Ferrimagnetic Metal for Energy-Efficient Bipolar Neuromorphic Computing
Beihang University（北京航空航天大学）；Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications（南京邮电大学）；Beijing University of Technology（北京工业大学）；Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院物理研究所）
