Effect of Plasma Electrolytic Surface Treatment on the Corrosion Characteristics of the Ti-6Al-4V in Acidic, Industrial and Marine Environments

Abstract

Titanium and its alloys find wide range of applications in aerospace, marine and automobile industries due to their excellent properties like high strength to weight ratio and good mechanical behaviour. Accordingly, the structural parts made of these alloys are being exposed to different corrosive environments. Therefore, the electrochemical stability of these structural parts needs to be significantly improved for their extended life time and effective functioning. The objective of the present work is to examine the effect of plasma electrolytic surface treatment in improving the corrosion resistance of Ti-6Al-4V in simulated acidic (0.5M H2SO4), marine (3.5% NaCl) and sulphur containing industrial (0.5M Na2SO4) environments. PEO is a relatively new technique for producing ceramic coatings on light metal alloys by employing higher voltage and current than anodizing. The Ti-6Al-4V was surface treated by plasma electrolytic oxidation (PEO) technique for 12 min under optimized conditions of electrical processing parameters and electrolyte chemistry. The logically selected electrolyte system consisting of 10 g of tri-sodium ortho phosphate (Na3PO4.12H2O), 2 g of sodium meta silicate (Na2SiO3.9H2O) and 2 g of potassium hydroxide (KOH) in 1 L of double distilled water was employed. The decisively optimized electrical parameters were fixed as 75% for the duty cycle, 1500 Hz for the pulse frequency and 0.1 A/cm2 for the current density. The phase composition of the resulted coating was analyzed by the X-ray diffraction (XRD) technique. The coating thickness and the elemental composition of the coating were assessed using a scanning electron microscope (SEM) equipped with energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS). The corrosion characteristics were determined by potentiodynamic polarization and electrochemical impedance spectroscopic (EIS) measurements. The XRD results demonstrated that the resulted coatings consisted of both anatase and rutile phases. The SEM results showed a coating thickness of about 15 µm and a canal like surface morphology with inter-connected open pores over the coating surface. The potentiodynamic polarization test results, in general, showed a minimum of about two orders of magnitude improvement in the corrosion resistance of the treated Ti-6Al-4V compared to that of the untreated in all the three corrosive environments. The EIS test results exhibit comparatively higher AC impedance and higher bode angle over the entire frequency range indicating an improved corrosion resistance of the surface treated Ti-6Al-4V. Thus the plasma electrolytic surface treatment with optimized process parameters, made the Ti-6Al-4V electrochemically stable by significantly improving its corrosion resistance in all the three environmental conditions.