A feasible method for the fabrication of VAlTiCrSi amorphous high entropy alloy film with outstanding anti-corrosion property

Abstract The VAlTiCrSi high-entropy alloy (HEA) film with excellent corrosion-resistance in artificial sea water was successfully and easily fabricated by DC magnetron sputtering. The target is spliced by high purity (>99.9%) V, Al, Ti, Cr and Si bars with periodic array. Based on the XRD and TEM results, it can be found that the HEA film shows a homogeneous microstructure of with amorphous phase, which is beneficial to enhance the barrier performance of substrate. In artificial seawater, the corrosion current density of HEA film reaches 4.68 × 10–9 A/cm2, an order of magnitude lower than that of 304 substrate (5.44 × 10–8 A/cm2), and the pitting pores are clearly seen on the corrode surface of 304 substrate, but not on HEA film, showing that the corrosion-resistance of VAlTiCrSi HEA film is superior to that of 304 substrate, which is attributed to the constituent elements in HEA film with strong anti-corrosion ability to induce the formation of dense passivation film during the potentiodynamic polarization tests.