Influence of ion implantation on corrosion resistance of the nickel over steel

Abstract

Nitrogen ions were implanted at different energies of 15, 30, 45 and 60 keV and with the flux of 10¹⁷ N⁺cm⁻² inside the nickel layers that have been deposited on the 304 stainless steel using the electron gun method at room temperature. XRD patterns showed different crystalline phases of nickel nitride for the implanted samples. The surface morphology was extracted by MountainsMap software’s using statistical data from AFM analysis. In addition, a potentiodynamic polarisation test was performed in a 3.5% NaCl solution to study the corrosion behaviour. These studies revealed that corrosion was directly related to the deposition parameters, mainly the implantation energy, modifying the surface so that the highest corrosion resistance was obtained for the sample implanted with 60 keV.

KEYWORDS:

• Corrosion
• micromorphology
• polarisation
• steel
• surface

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) for the financial support, as well as the use of the infrastructure of the Analytical Center of Universidade Federal do Amazonas (UFAM). We also would like to thank the Laboratório de Síntese de Nanomateriais e Nanoscopia (LSNN) associated with the Sistema Nacional de Laboratórios em Nanotecnologias (SisNANO) – Processo CNPq 442601/2019-0.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data availability statement

The data used to support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon request.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by CNPQ [grant number 442601/2019-0].