Different electrochemical approaches were proposed in this study to introduce nanoparticles to the coating layers, aiming at their in situ incorporation into the coating layers fabricated via plasma electrolytic oxidation (PEO). The addition of nanoparticles to the coating layers provided an electrochemical pathway to generate the functionalized coatings with a wide range of compositions and constituent phases as well giving the appearance of sealing the pores. In this study, the microstructure, chemical composition, and electrochemical response of the composite coating formed via one-stage PEO were compared with those obtained by means of structural modification of PEO coatings together with either impregnation or pre-deposition. For the combination of PEO and pre-deposition, the coating layer demonstrated less porous and better corrosion performance in the conditions used in this study, which were attributed to the denser and/or thicker layer resulting after incorporating the nanoparticles, such as SiO2 and ZrO2. In these methods, the nanoparticles were detected mainly not only near the coating surface, but also within the micro-defects inside the coating layers. Accordingly, the electrochemical analysis based on potentiodynamic polarization tests in 3.5 wt% NaCl solution clearly showed that the corrosion resistance of Mg alloy would be enhanced significantly due to the incorporation of SiO2 and ZrO2 or ZrO2 nanoparticles.
