Corrosion properties of a RF-magnetron-sputtered TiN coating deposited on 316L stainless steel

The effect of rf-power in the range from 100 to 200 W on the electrochemical properties of TiN coatings deposited on 316L stainless steel was investigated by using various electrochemical techniques in a 3.5-wt% NaCl solution. Surface analyses were also conducted to analyze the coating characteristics. X-ray diffraction (XRD) and atomic force microscopy (AFM) analyses confirmed that increasing the rf-power led to a preferred orientation of the TiN(200) microstructure and decreased the surface roughness. The potentiodynamic test results confirmed the passive behavior of all of the specimens with low passive current densities and demonstrated that the effective pitting resistance of the TiN coatings increased with increasing rf-power. The electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) tests showed that the TiN films deposited with high rf-power had excellent corrosion resistance during an immersion time of 720 h due to their high total resistance and low porosity.