Abstract
Aluminum alloys cannot be used in aggressive corrosion environments application. In this paper, three different surface coating technologies were used to coat the 6082-T6 aluminum alloy to increase the corrosion resistance, namely Plasma Electrolytic Oxidation (PEO), Plasma Spray Ceramic (PSC) and Hard Anodizing (HA). The cross-sectional microstructure analysis revealed that HA coating was less uniform compared to other coatings. PEO coating was well adhered to the substrate despite the thinnest layer among all three coatings, while the PSC coating has an additional loose layer between the coat and the substrate. X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis revealed crystalline alumina phases in PEO and PSC coatings while no phase was detected in HA other than an aluminum element. A series of electrochemistry experiments were used to evaluate the corrosion performances of these three types of coatings. Generally, all three-coated aluminum showed better corrosion performances. PEO coating has no charge transfer under all Inductive Coupled Plasma (ICP) tests, while small amounts of Al3+ were released for both HA and PSC coatings at 80 degrees C. The PEO coating showed the lowest corrosion current density followed by HA and then PSC coatings. The impedance resistance decreased as the immersion time increased, which indicated that this is due to the degradation and deterioration of the protective coatings. The results indicate that the PEO coating can offer the most effective protection to the aluminum substrate as it has the highest enhancement factor under electrochemistry tests compared to the other two coatings.