MITHRIL_e

The research group Surface Analysis, Electrochemistry and Corrosion of UNICA has long experience in characterizing electroless Ni-P coatings with electrochemical and surface analytical techniques, both regarding the corrosion resistance, their structure and surface composition. The main findings were that the very high corrosion resistance of Ni-P coatings (and also of amorphous Ni-P ribbons prepared by rapid quenching) is due to a nickel-phosphate surface layer of about 1 nm thickness and beneath a highly phosphorus enriched layer of about 2 nm that block the dissolution of nickel from the bulk of the Ni-P layer. This knowledge and know-how will be used to study Ni-P coatings as hydrogen permeation barriers. 

UNICA will use its knowledge and expertise to the study of Ni–P coatings as barriers to hydrogen permeation. Before starting the project a literature review on Ni-P coatings as hydrogen permeation barriers has been performed and published.

Hydrogen permeation experiments on Ni-P coated steel samples will be performed, using the Devanathan Starchurski cell and the established analytical protocol from previous studies on X60 steel.

The porosity of the coating will be characterized by the linear polarization electrochemical method. The surface of the Ni-P coatings will be characterized using X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS).

UNICA is one of the three “Characterizing and testing units” in the MITHRIL consortium. Together with University of Ghent and Fundación TEKNIKER (TEK) we are actively engaged in conducting electrochemical permeation tests on the five different coatings produced by the other partners. UNICA is responsible for the task T “ranking of coatings by permeation tests”.

UNICA will perform a limited amount of porosity tests of the different coatings produced by the other partners. On selected coatings and to address specific scientific questions also x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) will be performed on selected coatings of the other partners.