High Temperature Anti-Oxidation Behavior and Mechanical Property of Radio Frequency Magnetron Sputtered Cr Coating

A dense and uniform Cr coating was fabricated on the zirconium alloys fuel claddings by radio frequency (RF) magnetron sputtering to improve the mechanical and anti-oxidation properties under 1200 °C steam environment. The phase composition and the micro and macro morphologies of the specimens were investigated by X-ray diffraction (XRD), energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS), scanning electron microscope (SEM) and optical-microtopography (OM) analyses, and the high-temperature oxidation behavior was evaluated at 1200 °C steam environment for 3000 s. In this paper, there exists a positive correlation between thickness and Vickers hardness (HV), and a negative correlation between surface roughness and bonding force. Radial tensile was introduced to investigate the deformation-resistant performance, and the displacement of the Cr-coated specimen was as low as 2.32 mm, which was much lower than the uncoated zircaloy cladding (3.05 mm). Different thicknesses of Cr coatings were deposited to investigate the oxidation degrees of zircaloy cladding under a high-temperature steam environment. The optimal 6 μm Cr-coated zirconium alloys cladding exhibited an excellent anti-oxidation property, and the weight gain was as low as ~4.12 mg/cm2, which was almost one-third of the uncoated specimen.