Effect of sintering temperature on the corrosion properties of nanostructured Fe‐18Cr‐2Si alloy prepared by SPS

Abstract

Nanostructured Fe‐18Cr‐2Si alloys were developed by a combination of mechanically alloying (MA) and spark plasma sintering (SPS) process. SPS was carried out in vacuum at three different temperatures (900, 1000, and 1100 °C) with a fixed holding time of 10 min and an applied pressure of 50 MPa. Potentiodynamic polarization (PDP), linear polarization resistance (LPR), and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) were used to study the effect of sintering temperature on the electrochemical properties of newly developed nanostructured ferritic Fe‐18Cr‐2Si alloy. XRD results showed that, after sintering, crystallite size increased with increasing sintering temperature and maximum crystallite size was 23.64 nm. The results showed that with increasing sintering temperature, corrosion resistance was increased in terms of pitting potential (Epit), passive current density (ip), and polarization resistance (Rp). The improved corrosion resistance was found to be closely related with the densification of the sintered alloys.