On the corrosion of binary magnesium-rare earth alloys

The corrosion properties of high-pressure die cast (HPDC) magnesium-rare earth (RE) based alloys have been studied. Binary additions of La, Ce and Nd to commercially pure Mg were made up to a nominal 6 wt.%. It was found that the intermetallic phases formed in the eutectic were Mg 12La, Mg 12Ce and Mg 3Nd, respectively. Results indicated that increasing RE alloying additions systematically increased corrosion rates. This was also described in the context of the electrochemical response of Mg–RE intermetallics – which were independently assessed by the electrochemical microcapillary technique. This study is a discrete effort towards revealing the electrochemical effect of carefully controlled binary alloying additions to magnesium in order to elucidate the microstructure–corrosion relationship more generally for HPDC Mg alloys. Such fundamental information is seen to not only be useful in understanding the corrosion of alloys which presently contain RE additions, but may be exploited in the design of magnesium alloys with more predictable corrosion behaviour. There is a special need to understand this relationship – particularly for magnesium that commonly displays poor corrosion resistance.