Abstract
TiN coatings were deposited by HiPIMS at different N2 flow rate to improve the corrosion resistance and conductivity of metallic bipolar plates. The results show that the surface microstructure of TiN coating depends strongly on the N2 flow rate, all the samples (N2 flow rate: 4 to10 sccm) meet the DOE 2025 standard and exhibit good hydrophobicity, which has great potential for industrial application. Among them, at the N2 flow rate of 8 sccm, the TiN coating shows high compactness and the optimum surface microstructure with the lowest surface roughness of 1.083 nm and the highest hardness of 31.172 GPa. The optimized TiN coating exhibits excellent corrosion resistance with corrosion current density of 0.278 μA cm−2 and a low interfacial contact resistance value of 3.51 mΩ cm2. This work has opened a new way for the large-scale preparation of high-performance metal bipolar plate coatings.
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