ACTA

Ion Beam Analysis of Hydrogen-Treated Ti/TiN Protective Nanomultilayers

O.R. Kakuee^a, V. Fathollahi^a, M. Lamehi-Rachti^a, P. Oliaiy^a, H. Seyedi^b, S. Safa^c, M. Mojtahedzadeh Larijani^b and H. Moazzami^a
^aNuclear Science Research School, NSTRI, P.O. Box 14395-836, Tehran, Iran
^bMaterials Research School, NSTRI, P.O. Box 31485-498, Karaj, Iran
^cDepartment of Nanotechnology, Faculty of Engineering, Tarbiat Modares University, P.O. Box 14115-143, Tehran, Iran

Received: September 10, 2011; in final form February 12, 2012

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Ti/TiN multilayer films with a few multilayer periods and a total sub-μm thickness were deposited on AISI 304 stainless steel substrates by ion coating deposition technique. To investigate the effect of hydrogen treatment on the corrosion behavior of the multilayers, some of the samples were hydrogen treated after deposition of the first and/or the second Ti interlayer. ¹⁴N(d,α₁) ¹²C nuclear reaction and the Rutherford backscattering spectrometry were used to obtain the atomic composition profiles and thickness of Ti/TiN layers. Nuclear reaction analysis confirmed the presence of two separable TiN layers of comparable thickness on the surface and in depth of the two-period multilayers. These techniques were used to determine the thickness of individual Ti and TiN layers and revealed that the stoichiometry of TiN layers was approximately Ti:N=1:1. Hydrogen depth profile in the prepared samples was obtained by elastic recoil detection analysis. It was found that a remarkable volume of hydrogen was uptaken by the Ti layer in the hydrogen treated samples. The TiN (200) diffraction peak in the X-ray diffraction pattern was observed with different intensities depending on the sample preparation parameters. The corrosion behavior of the multilayers was studied by means of potentiodynamic polarization in 0.5 M NaCl solutions. It was found that the hydrogen treatment of Ti interlayer could potentially improve the corrosion properties of the Ti/TiN layers.

DOI: 10.12693/APhysPolA.122.132
PACS numbers: 68.43.-h, 68.49.-h, 81.15.Jj, 25.45.-z