A comparison between the corrosion behavior of 316L stainless steel manufactured by rolling and laser powder bed fusion in 0.1 M H2SO4 solution

Recently, laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) technology as an important additive manufacturing (AM) technique has attracted the attention researchers. It uses a laser source to melt metal powder in layers in order to build parts. In this study, electrochemical and surface properties of 316L stainless steel manufactured by rolling and laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) were investigated in 0.1 M H2SO4 solution. In order to examine the corrosion behavior of stainless steel in acidic medium, electrochemical methods, including electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS), potentiodynamic polarization, and characterization methods such as field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), and x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), were used. As a result of the electrochemical tests, the charge transfer resistance of stainless steel fabricated by LPBF increased about 8 times and Ecorr shifted about +40 mV compared to the rolled stainless steel. LPBF produced samples had higher corrosion resistance due to the fine cellular and spherical inclusion microstructure formed during fabrication process.