Complementary methods for characterization of the corrosion products on the surface of Ag60Cu26Zn14 and Ag58.5Cu31.5Pd10 brazing alloys

Abstract

Corrosion products formed on the surface of two silver brazing alloys after the potentiostatic polarization in 3.5% sodium chloride solution were characterized by the standard methods such as, the X-ray diffraction, micro-Raman spectroscopy, and scanning electron microscopy with energy-dispersive spectroscopy. This paper presents the results of a laser desorption/ionization mass spectrometry (LDI MS) analysis as a new approach to the characterization of corrosion products. The potential of the anodic polarization was 0.5 V versus saturated calomel electrode, and the process duration was 300 s. The corrosion layers on both investigated alloys were similar in composition with cuprous chloride and silver chloride as the main components and had strong indications of cuprous oxide formation. The major difference between these two layers was the existence of zinc hydroxychloride as the corrosion product of Ag-Cu-Zn alloy. Palladium compounds were not found in the case of Ag-Cu-Pd alloy. The results of different methods have shown a good consistency. Complementarity between the used methods was useful in the interpretation of the results for each used method. This study has demonstrated that LDI MS can be used as an efficient additional method together with the traditional ones.