Correlation between composition of passive layer and corrosion behavior of high Si-containing austenitic stainless steels in nitric acid

Austenitic stainless steels with 18% Cr have a good corrosion behavior in pure nitric acid. However, when oxidizing power of the solution increases, this kind of stainless steels faces a severe intergranular corrosion. Adding a sufficiently high concentration of silicon to the steel avoids this type of corrosion: in oxidizing solutions, those stainless steels exhibit generalized corrosion but their dissolution rate is higher than the one of stainless steels without silicon. To find out the role of silicon on such effects, the corrosion behavior of two different stainless steels with equivalent chromium content but with different silicon content (304L steel and Uranus S1N) has been studied in concentrated nitric acid solutions. Correlations have been evidenced between the passive layer composition investigated by XPS analysis and the corrosion behavior characterized by electrochemical techniques. The presence of silicon in the steel changes neither the oxidation state of chromium or iron, nor the ratio between iron and chromium in the passive layer. Silicon is present in the passive layer in an important content (35 at.%) and thus decreases the chromium content of the passive layer (80 and 50 at.% respectively for 304L steel and Uranus S1N after nitric passivation). Uranus S1N exhibits a less protective passive layer and so its generalized corrosion rate is higher than the one of 304L steel. A selective deposition of platinoids highlights differences of polarization distribution on the surface between the grain boundaries and grain faces for theses steels. For Uranus S1N, the similar electrochemical behavior of grain boundaries and faces might be connected with the homogeneous silicon distribution