PHASE STABILITY AND SEMICONDUCTING BEHAVIOUR OF LOW ACTIVATION AUSTENITIC MN-CR STEELS

Four compositions of austenitic Mn-Cr steels have been developed successfully for in-vessel component materials in power plant industry. The phase stability of these Mn-Cr steels was studied by and X-ray diffraction (XRD) patterns. XRD patterns have shown that the matrix of these Mn-Cr steels is a single ?-phase structure. The potentiodynamic polarisation curves suggested that these fabricated Mn-Cr steels showed passive behaviour in 0.1M H2SO4 solution. Therefore, semiconducting behaviour of passive film formed on these fabricated Mn-Cr steels in 0.1M H2SO4 solution was evaluated by Mott–Schottky analysis. This analysis revealed that passive films behave as n-type and p-type semiconductors. Based on the Mott–Schottky analysis, it was also shown that donor and acceptor densities are in the order of 1021 cm-3 and are comparable for other austenitic stainless steels in acidic environments.