Corrosion behavior of nickel alloys in wet hydrofluoric acid

Abstract

Hydrofluoric acid is a water solution of hydrogen fluoride (HF). Hydrofluoric acid is used widely in diverse types of industrial applications; traditionally, it is used in pickling solutions in the metal industry, in the fabrication of chlorofluorocarbon compounds, as an alkylation agent for gasoline and as an etching agent in the industry of glass. In recent years, hydrofluoric acid has extensively been used in the manufacture of semiconductors and microelectronics during the wet chemical cleaning of silicon wafers. Hydrofluoric acid can be considered a reducing acid and although it is chemically classified as weaker than, for example, sulfuric or hydrochloric acids, it is extremely corrosive. This acid is also particularly toxic and poses greater health hazard than most other acids. The corrosion behavior of metals in hydrofluoric acid has not been as systematic studied in the laboratory as for other common inorganic acids. This is largely because tests using hydrofluoric acid cannot be run in standard equipment and because of the toxic nature of this acid. Moreover, short-term weight loss laboratory corrosion tests in hydrofluoric acid can be frustrating since the results are not as highly reproducible as in the case of other acids such as sulfuric or hydrochloric. Onemore » of the reasons is because hydrofluoric acid commonly attacks the coupons used for testing in a non-uniform manner. That is, the corrosive power of this acid is not aimed to uniform thinning but mostly to localized penetration below the skin of the metal in the form of thin cracks, voids, pits, trenches and sometimes intergranular attack. Figure 1 shows the cross section of a coupon of Alloy 600 (N06600) exposed for 336 h to the vapor phase of a solution of 20% HF at 93 C. In cases where internal penetration occurs such as in Figure 1, it may not be recommended to use corrosion rates based on weight loss for material selection.« less