Corrosion resistance of Al ion implanted AZ31 magnesium alloy at elevated temperature

The Al ion implantation into AZ31 magnesium alloy was carried out in a MEVVA 80–10 ion implantation system at an ion energy of 40–50 keV with an ion implantation dose ranging from 2 × 1016 to 1 × 1017 ions/cm2 at an elevated temperature of 300 °C induced by an ion current density of 26 μA/cm2. The concentration–depth profile of implanted Al in AZ31 alloy measured by Rutherford backscattering spectrometry (RBS) is a Gaussian-type-like distribution in a depth up to about 1200 nm with the maximum Al concentration of about 8 at.%. The X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis revealed the formation of α-Mg(Al) phase, intermetallic β-Mg17Al12, and MgO phase on the Al ion implanted samples. The potentiodynamic anodic polarization curves of the Al ion implanted samples in the 0.01 mol/l NaCl solution with a pH value of 12 showed increases of the corrosion potential and the pitting breakdown potential, and a decrease of the passive current density, respectively. The Al ion implanted samples with 6 × 1016 ions/cm2 achieved the high pitting breakdown potential to about − 480 mV (SCE). In the 0.08 mol/l NaCl solution with pH = 12, the Al ion implanted samples with 1 × 1017 ions/cm2 showed an increased pitting breakdown potential to about − 1290 mV (SCE), from around − 1540 mV (SCE) of unimplanted samples. It is indicated that different corrosion mechanisms are responsible for improvement in corrosion resistance of the AZ31 magnesium alloy in the NaCl solutions with the varied concentrations.