effects of the post-deposition annealing treatment on the electrochemical behavior of tin coating deposited by cae-pvd method

The main purpose of this investigation was to assess the effect of post-deposition annealing treatment onthe electrochemical behavior of tin coating developed on aisi 304 stainless steel substrate using cathodic arcevaporation physical vapor deposition (cae-pvd). post-annealing treatment at 400ºc was performed on the coatedsubstrate for 1 h. the studied samples were characterized using x-ray diffraction (xrd), scanning electronmicroscope (sem), potentiodynamic polarization (pdp), and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (eis) tests.the preferred orientation of tin (111) was verified by xrd patterns. the crystallinity of the coating was increasedafter annealing treatment. sem observations indicated that tin coatings free of cracks were developed on thesubstrate. the electrochemical measurements elucidated that the annealed coating had better corrosion resistancecompared to that of the as-deposited coating with a lower current corrosion density. this investigation implies thatimproved corrosion performance of the tin coating can achieved by performing post-deposition annealingtreatment.