Correlation between corrosion resistance and the local atomic structure of electroless, annealed Ni-P amorphous alloys

Amorphous Ni-P alloys were prepared via electroless plating and annealing at 250 degrees C at different times to obtain different microstructures. The local atomic structure of annealed Ni-P amorphous alloys was analyzed by calculating the atomic pair distribution function from the XRD patterns. Corrosion resistance in 0.5 M H2SO4 was investigated via electrochemical techniques. The results indicated that the improvement of corrosion resistance is in agreement with decreasing order cluster size. The order cluster size of annealed Ni-P amorphous alloys initially decreased then increased with increasing annealing time. By contrast, corrosion resistance showed an opposite trend. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.