Electrochemical Behaviours of Titanium Nitride (TiN) and Chromium Nitride (CrN) Based PVD Coating Systems

Hard coatings applied to steel components prevent corrosion attacks while at the same time mitigate erosion attack. However, the presence of process related through-coating defects such as pin holes, voids and growth defects, provides accesses for corrosive media to metal substrates, initializing pitting corrosion and eventually resulting in coating failure. This research studies the corrosion behavior of PVD TiN and CrN (CrSiCN) coated steels in 3.5 wt. % NaCl aqueous solution using potentiodynamic polarization and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) techniques. The results revealed that in a coating-substrate system, effective diffusion coefficient and diffusion layer thickness control the corrosion resistance; both factors are found to be related to coating microstructure. A denser and thicker coating structure are shown to have lower effective diffusion coefficients and greater effective diffusion layer thicknesses and consequently provided a high resistance to electrochemical corrosion.