The effect of vanillin on the corrosion behavior of AA6061 Al alloy in 3.5% NaCl solution wasinvestigated using potentiodynamic polarization and electrochemical noise (EN) techniques. Vanillinoffers interesting possibilities for corrosion inhibition due to its nontoxicity and high solubility inaqueous media. The best inhibition effect at 200 ppm vanillin was a marked characteristic of theinhibitor. Potentiodynamic polarization measurements indicated that the inhibitor is of mixed type.According to calculated amount of noise charges by using the standard deviation of partial signal(SDPS) at the particular interval of frequency it is possible to obtain the inhibition efficiency of aninhibitor. The inhibition efficiency values obtained from EN method show a reasonable agreementwith those obtained from potentiodynamic polarization measurements. According to the quantumchemical calculations it can be deduced that the number of intermolecular hydrogen bonds isincreased by increase in concentration of vanillin. This verifies the decrease in the inhibitionefficiency of vanillin at high concentrations. Manuscript profile