Abstract
This research was conducted to investigate in detail the effect of $PO_4{^{3-}}$, $CO_3{^{2-}}$ and $F^-$ anions on the electrochemical properties of the thin air-formed oxide film-covered AZ31 Mg alloy. In this work, native air-formed oxide films on AZ31 Mg alloy samples were prepared by knife-abrading method and the changes in the electrochemical properties of the air-formed oxide film were investigated in electrolytes containing 0.01 M, 0.05 M and 0.1 M of $PO_4{^{3-}}$, $CO_3{^{2-}}$ and $F^-$ anions. It was observed that the trend of open circuit potential (OCP) transients changed only in the solution containing $PO_4{^{3-}}$ ions. The Nyquist plots obtained from electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) showed that the resistance of the new surface films formed in fluoride ion containing bath increased with the increase in concentration of fluoride ions but the resistance of surface films formed in carbonate ion containing bath decreased with the increase in concentration of carbonate ions. The potentiodynamic polarization curves illustrated that under anodic polarization, there was growth of porous passive layer only in fluoride ion containing solution while the surface layer formed in phosphate and carbonate ion containing solutions lost its passivity at high anodic potential of $2.5V_{Ag/AgCl}$.