Mőssbauer Spectroscopy of Commercial Galvannealed Zinc Coatings

Corrosion losses amount to 2% of production of the steel. Research in the area of corrosion protection and surface treatment of materials is therefore one of the most frequent topics in contemporary material engineering. The traditional and well-known, method of surface treatment technology is the hot-dipping process involving zinc coating [1]. Due to inter-metallic phases resulting from steel and zinc substrates, Mossbauer spectroscopy is one of the convenient methods of phase analysis. However, the sample preparation presents with a problem, because of the top part of the coatings, which is formed by zinc and gamma radiation is not able to penetrate the layers of intermetallics below this zinc layer.