Effect of copper ions implantation on corrosion behavior of zirconium in 1 M H2SO4

In order to study the effect of copper ion implantation on the aqueous corrosion behavior, specimens of zirconium were implanted with copper ions with fluences ranging from 1 × 1016 to 1 × 1017 ions/cm2, using a metal vapor vacuum arc source (MEVVA) operated at an extraction voltage of 40 kV. The valence states and depth distributions of elements in the surface layer of the samples were analyzed by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and auger electron spectroscopy (AES), respectively. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) was used to examine the micro-structure of the copper-implanted samples. The potentiodynamic polarization technique was employed to evaluate the aqueous corrosion resistance of the implanted zirconium samples in a 1 M H2SO4 solution. It was found that a significant improvement was achieved in the aqueous corrosion resistance of zirconium implanted with copper ions. While the corrosion resistance of implanted samples declined with increasing the fluence. Finally, the mechanism of the corrosion behavior of copper-implanted zirconium was discussed.