Influence of titanium ions implantation on corrosion behavior of zircaloy-2 in 1Â M H2SO4

In order to study the effect of titanium ion implantation on the aqueous corrosion behavior, samples of zircaloy-2 were implanted with titanium 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. Three-sweep potentiodynamic polarization technique was employed to evaluate the aqueous corrosion resistance of implanted zircaloy-2 in a 1 M H2SO4 solution. It was found that a significant improvement was achieved in the aqueous corrosion resistance of the titanium implanted zircaloy-2. The larger the fluence, the better is the corrosion resistance of implanted sample. Finally, the mechanism of the corrosion behavior of titanium-implanted zircaloy-2 was discussed.