Sputtered titanium dioxide thin films for galvanic corrosion protection of AISI 304 stainless steel coupled with carbon fiber reinforced plastics

Galvanic corrosion leads to high corrosion rates when AISI 304 stainless steel is coupled with carbon fiber reinforced plastics (CFRP) in electrolytes. The performance of very thin (70-350 nm) reactively sputtered TiO2 coatings for improving the corrosion protection of AISI 304 was investigated in this work. The TiO2 coatings exhibit a markedly improved galvanic corrosion protection of AISI 304 by reducing the galvanic current density by a factor of 104. It will be shown that very thin TiO2 films provide much better corrosion protection than thicker ones. Structural properties will be discussed as an explanation for this finding.