Effect of grain boundary engineering on corrosion behavior of 316 L stainless steel bipolar plate in proton exchange membrane fuel cells environment

Abstract

This study illustrates the effect of grain boundary engineering (GBE) on the corrosion behavior of 316 L stainless steel (SS) in a proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) environment. It shows that the GBE increased the density of grain boundary and the coincidence site lattice (CSL) performes a better corrosion resistance, a preferential corrosion phase that the impurity elements are more likely biased at during the cast, the Random grain boundaries(RGBs) decreases. Furthermore, the texture on GBE2's closed-packed (111) plane reduces the surface atoms' dissolution velocity, thereby, decreasing the thermodynamic tendency to form dense corrosion films and nucleation kinetics. The above combined reasons lead to the lowest corrosion resistance of GBE2.