Analysis of microstructure, treatment pattern, and corrosion behaviour of AZ91D magnesium alloy processed by selective laser surface remelting

In this work, we show that selective laser surface remelting, apart from modifying the microstructure, can also act as a design method to treat the surface of AZ91D magnesium alloy with varying treatment patterns, thus providing a feasible approach to tailor the electrochemical behaviour and to improve its corrosion resistance. Two treatment patterns, spots and stripes, are designed, in which cases, the boundary ratio and geometrical complexity are analyzed and compared. Besides microstructure, Hydrogen evolution, and potentiodynamic polarization curves are studied. It is found that in the central treated area, corrosion is hindered by formation of the greatly refined β-Mg17Al12 continuous network, together with the uniform distribution of surface potential. As a comparison, in the boundary region, extensive micro/galvanic couples are detrimental to the corrosion resistance, due to the oriented dendritic microstructure. As a result, good corrosion resistance, 3–5 times higher than the as-received material, is obtained despite of the variation of treatment patterns and presence of extensive micro/galvanic couples in the boundary region, indicating that selective laser surface remelting could act as a feasible way to tailor the corrosion behaviour of AZ91D. It is suggested that this technique provides not only a metallurgical approach, and also a design one to improve the corrosion resistance of AZ91D, which may lead to numerous applications of both AZ91D and laser surface treatment.