A Study on the Corrosion Behaviour of Laser Textured Pure Aluminium in Saltwater

Abstract

Commercially pure aluminium is employed in several industrial applications. On some applications, the surface of this material needs to be functionalised. Laser surface texturing is a powerful tool to functionalise aluminium and aluminium alloy surfaces. However, the corrosion resistance of the laser textured aluminium alloy can be modified, and this has rarely been investigated in the literature. Consequently, the corrosion resistance of the laser textured commercially pure aluminium in saltwater was evaluated using several electrochemical techniques: asymmetric electrochemical noise, potentiodynamic polarisation curve and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy. Although the non-laser surface textured samples possessed higher kinetic corrosion resistance in the first hours of immersion, the corrosion mechanism (process group of the corrosion) was found to be more unstable than the laser textured specimens. The oxidised layer of the textured samples was also nobler than the native passive film.