PHASE STABILITY AND SEMICONDUCTING BEHAVIOUR OF LOW ACTIVATION AUSTENITIC MN-CR STEELS

Four compositions of austenitic mn-cr steels have been developed successfully for in-vessel componentmaterials in power plant industry. the phase stability of these mn-cr steels was studied by and x-ray diffraction (xrd)patterns. xrd patterns have shown that the matrix of these mn-cr steels is a single ?-phase structure. thepotentiodynamic polarisation curves suggested that these fabricated mn-cr steels showed passive behaviour in 0.1mh2so4 solution. therefore, semiconducting behaviour of passive film formed on these fabricated mn-cr steels in 0.1mh2so4 solution was evaluated by mott–schottky analysis. this analysis revealed that passive films behave as n-typeand p-type semiconductors. based on the mott–schottky analysis, it was also shown that donor and acceptor densitiesare in the order of 1021 cm-3 and are comparable for other austenitic stainless steels in acidic environments.