Combining AFM imaging and elementally resolved spectro-electrochemistry for understanding stability and quality of passive films formed on Alloy 600

Dominik Dworschak; Marina Bishara; Hsiu-Wei Cheng; Markus Valtiner

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arXiv · 2104.07100

Combining AFM imaging and elementally resolved spectro-electrochemistry for understanding stability and quality of passive films formed on Alloy 600

Dominik Dworschak·Marina Bishara·Hsiu-Wei Cheng·Markus Valtiner

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Abstract

Understanding elemental corrosion currents and visualizing corroding topographies provide a detailed insight into corrosion mechanisms at the nano-scale. Here, we develop a strategy to understand the elemental composition, corrosion resistivity and local stability of passive materials. Specifically, we utilize a pulse voltammetry approach in a novel electrochemical AFM cell and complement this data by real-time dissolution currents based on spectro-electrochemical online analysis in an ICP-MS flow cell. We study the oxide properties and their protective behaviour, when formed under different applied potentials using alloy 600 as model sample. Both AFM and ICP-MS data show that passive films formed on alloy 600 at around +0.3 to +0.4~V in neutral 1 mM NaCl solution are most stable during anodic corrosion at +1.0~V, while AFM further demonstrates that local dissolution occurs, indicating locally varying defect levels in the passive film. In combination of both techniques, our approach provide real-time elementally resolved and localized information of passive film quality under corrosive conditions, and it may prove useful for other corroding materials.

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Dominik Dworschak, Marina Bishara, Hsiu-Wei Cheng, Markus Valtiner. 2021-04-14. Combining AFM imaging and elementally resolved spectro-electrochemistry for understanding stability and quality of passive films formed on Alloy 600. https://arxiv.org/abs/2104.07100

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