Structural and corrosion characterization of hydroxyapatite/zirconium nitride-coated AZ91 magnesium alloy by ion beam sputtering

Highlights: • The thickness of HA coatings increase by ion beam sputtering time. • The residual strain in HA structure decrease by deposition time increment. • Crystallite size of HA coatings increase by deposition time increment. • The best corrosion resistance occurs at intermediate deposition time. - Abstract: The adhesion of hydroxyapatite (HA) as a coating for the AZ91 magnesium alloy substrate can be improved by using the sputtering method and an intermediate layer, such as ZrN. In this study, HA coatings were applied on ZrN intermediate layers at a temperature of 300 °C for 180, 240, 300, 360, and 420 min by ion beam sputtering. A profilometer device was used to study the HA coating thickness, which changed from 2 μm for the 180-min deposition to 4.7 μm for 420-min deposition. The grazing incidence X-ray diffraction analysis method and the Williamson–Hall analysis were used for structural investigation. As the deposition time increased, the crystalline size increased from 50 nm to 690 nm. However, given sufficient time for stress relief on the coating structure, the lattice strain values were close to zero. Energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy results showed that the Ca/P ratio ranged from 1.73 to 1.81. The external indentation method was used to evaluate the coating adhesion to the substrate. The slope of curve for applied force changes versus the radius of cracks in the coating (dP/dr) varied in the range of 0.2–0.07 by the deposition time, indicating that the adhesion increased with the increase in coating thickness. The potentiodynamic polarization technique was used to study the corrosion behavior. With increasing deposition time, the corrosion potential of samples did not show a significant change, and the corrosion potential of all samples (coated and uncoated substrates) was more positive than approximately 55 mV. When the deposition time increased to 360 min, the corrosion current density decreased from 5.5 μA/cm² to 0.33 μA/cm². After 420 min of deposition, the current density increased to 8.2 μA/cm². Scanning electron microscopy images of the HA surface layer after 420 min clearly showed cracks on the coating surface, which led to the increase in corrosion current density.