Corrosion Behavior of Silver-Plated Circuit Boards in a Simulated Marine Environment with Industrial Pollution

Kui Xiao; Pan Yi; Lidan Yan; Ziheng Bai; Chaofang Dong; Pengfei Dong; Xiong Gao

doi:10.3390/ma10070762

Corrosion Behavior of Silver-Plated Circuit Boards in a Simulated Marine Environment with Industrial Pollution

Materials (Basel). 2017 Jul 6;10(7):762. doi: 10.3390/ma10070762.

Authors

Kui Xiao¹, Pan Yi², Lidan Yan³, Ziheng Bai⁴, Chaofang Dong⁵, Pengfei Dong⁶, Xiong Gao⁷

Affiliations

¹ Corrosion and Protection Center, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing 100083, China. xiaokui@ustb.edu.cn.
² Corrosion and Protection Center, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing 100083, China. B20160547@xs.ustb.edu.cn.
³ Corrosion and Protection Center, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing 100083, China. S20140516@xs.ustb.edu.cn.
⁴ Corrosion and Protection Center, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing 100083, China. G20169110@xs.ustb.edu.cn.
⁵ Corrosion and Protection Center, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing 100083, China. cfdong@ustb.edu.cn.
⁶ Corrosion and Protection Center, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing 100083, China. G20159099@xs.ustb.edu.cn.
⁷ Corrosion and Protection Center, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing 100083, China. S20151321@xs.ustb.edu.cn.

Abstract

The electrochemical corrosion behavior of a silver-plated circuit board (PCB-ImAg) in a polluted marine atmosphere environment (Qingdao in China) is studied through a simulated experiment. The morphologies of PCB-ImAg show some micropores on the surface that act as the corrosion-active points in the tests. Cl^- mainly induces microporous corrosion, whereas SO₂ causes general corrosion. Notably, the silver color changes significantly under SO₂ influence. EIS results show that the initial charge transfer resistance in the test containing SO₂ and Cl^- is 9.847 × 10³, while it is 3.701 × 10⁴ in the test containing Cl^- only, which demonstrates that corrosion accelerates in a mixed atmosphere. Polarization curves further show that corrosion potential is lower in mixed solutions (between -0.397 V SCE and -0.214 V SCE) than it in the solution containing Cl^- only (-0.168 V SCE), indicating that corrosion tendency increases with increased HSO₃^- concentration.

Keywords: electrochemical impedance spectroscopy; potentiodynamic polarization curves; silver-plated circuit boards; simulated polluted environment.