Corrosion Behaviour of Room Temperature Cured Polysilazane-Derived Silica Coatings on Al 5086

Aluminium is a widely used material, due to its relatively low density and good mechanical properties [1]. However, its resistance to corrosion is low at extreme values of pH and in presence of chloride ions, which can cause pitting phenomena [2]. Aluminium is therefore usually protected by anodization in acid environments (chromic acid, sulfuric acid, phosphoric acid, etc), but this process presents serious health issues and environmental hazards. Furthermore, the aluminium oxide surface is porous and Clions can slowly penetrate it, preventing the application of the anodic oxidation technology in chloride rich environments (i.e. seawater) [3, 4]. Classic organic coatings based on paints and lacquers offer a poor environmental barrier, and suffer of many problems such as blistering and filiform corrosion [5]. Blistering can happen by volume expansion of the coating, inclusion of gas or due to build-up of osmotic pressure that can reach 3000 kPa (30 Atm.) [6]. Filiform corrosion happens at defective sites of the coating in conditions of high humidity, and it develops at the filmmetal interface when water can permeate through. Protective inorganic coatings that act as environmental barrier are promising candidates for improving the corrosion resistance of many metals, and many deposition methods, like thermal spraying [7], CVD [8] or PVD [9] processes and Sol-Gel techniques [10], have been used. These methods have many drawbacks, such as the high technology required for the vapour deposition methods, which greatly increase the cost of the final product, and the porosity of the final coatings, typical of thermal spraying or Sol-Gel processing. For instance, SiO2 and ZrO2 coatings on aluminium, obtained from Sol-Gel precursor, proved to be an interesting alternative to the traditional chromate based surface treatment [11], but pitting corrosion and degradation products were observed on the surface after 2 days of immersion in dilute Harrison's solution (3.5% ammonium sulphate, 0.5% NaCl). Aluminium has also been protected with hybrid organic/silica films enriched with corrosion inhibitors to improve the coatings’ performance and provide selfhealing properties [12]. The way of adding inhibitors is simple and easy to achieve, but it is difficult to control the release of inhibitors to the surface, thus resulting in a degradation of the performances of such films over time. Sol-Gel and organicbased coatings suffer of many problems, such as the need of thermal annealing of the former to reduce porosity, which results in poor adhesion to the aluminium substrate and cracking, and high water and oxygen permeability of the latter, which leads to blistering and filiform corrosion. An alternative way to these methods is the use of organoelemental precursors that can be converted to low permeation glass or ceramic-like coatings by chemical reactions [13] at room temperature. The majority of inorganic films for corrosion protection is obtained by pyrolysis at high temperatures of appropriate precursors [14], either in inert atmosphere like argon [15] or nitrogen [16, 17], or in oxygen containing atmosphere [18] to ensure full conversion to the oxide. However, silica-based coatings can be obtained from polysilazane precursors at room temperature [19]: this method is cost effective and advantageous in terms of film stability and adhesion, since no thermal stresses (due to the difference in expansion coefficients) are introduced at the substrate-coating interface. In this work, the preparation of a stable environmental barrier coating is performed using perhydropolysilazane (PHPS) as precursor (having a theoretical Si:N ratio of 1:1). It can be easily polymerized and converted to silica either by simple exposition to air or to basic vapours [13] and it has a better adhesion to the substrate than films obtained via Sol-Gel processing due to the absence of thermal annealing.