A study of the corrosion of stainless steel 304L coated with a 190 nm-thick manganese layer and annealed with nitrogen flux in a 0.4-mole solution of H2SO4 at different temperatures

A method for enhancing the resistance against corrosion of stainless steel 304L coated with 190 nm-thick manganese film and annealed with nitrogen flux at constant temperature (723 K) is reported. The variable quantity in this work is the temperature of the corroding solution (293 K and 333 K). X-ray diffraction analysis was employed to investigate the crystallographical changes of the annealed samples; atomic force microscope and scanning electron microscope were used for the morphology and studying the roughness of their surfaces; polarization analysis, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy, and phase and Bode diagrams, as well as the Kramers-Kronig transformation, were employed to study the susceptibility of the samples to corrosion, at temperatures 293 K and 333 K in 0.4 M H2SO4 solutions. Our results, from all the above analyses, unanimously point to the fact that in the process of enhancing resistance to corrosion, the annealing stage is the most crucial for improving the coating and the crystal structure of the samples and that the adsorption of Mn is not sufficient for the enhancement of the surface layer. Moreover, it was observed that increasing the temperature of the solution decreases the resistance of the samples owing to an increase in the rate of corrosion.