Oxidation resistance of Mo/Cr bilayer coating on Zr alloy in a 1200 °C steam environment

The Cr-coated Zr alloys demonstrate excellent resistance to high-temperature steam oxidation. However, the rapid diffusion pathways for oxygen formed by the inter-diffusion between the coating and alloy at high temperatures significantly affect the steam oxidation resistance of the coated alloys. To address this issue, we developed a Mo/Cr bilayer coating on Zr alloy by a combination of dc-MS and HiPIMS surface treatments. The coating exhibits outstanding steam oxidation resistance at high temperatures, resulting in a mass gain approximately 86.6% and 44.1% lower than that of the bare Zr alloy and Cr coating, respectively, after 30 min of steam oxidation at 1200 degrees C. This is mainly because, during the oxidation process, the Mo interface layer undergoes a transformation into a thin and high-quality double diffusion layer structure, effectively avoiding high-temperature inter-diffusion between the Cr coating and Zr alloy, thereby inhibiting the formation of oxygen diffusion pathways. (c) 2024 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of Institute of Metal Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ )