Proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) is considered as one of the most promising alternative energy devices due to its high efficiency, low pollutants emission and possible application in automobiles. However, the application of PEMFC is still hindered by the high cost of some of its components such as bipolar plates (BPP) which are a key component in PEMFC to facilitate electron transfer, gas flow, heat and water removal. To reduce the cost, increase conductivity and durability, metallic bipolar plates, typically made of stainless steel, are normally used but they could suffer from severe corrosion in the acidic environment of PEMFC; the formation of corrosion products on the metal surface could reduce the through-plane electrical conductivity and increase the interfacial contact resistance (ICR) between the bipolar plates and gas diffusion layer, eventually causing high power loss in the fuel cell stack. Therefore, developing corrosion resistant and electrically conductive bipolar plates is of vital importance for the practical applications of PEMFC.

Transition nitride coated stainless steel, such as titanium nitride (TiN) coated 316L SS, is considered as a possible solution to improve the performance metallic bipolar plates. In this work, TiN coated 316L SSs with heat treatment at different temperatures were prepared. The corrosion behaviours of the prepared samples were investigated in the simulated working environments of fuel cell. The heat treated samples exhibit the improved corrosion resistance compared with the pristine TiN coated samples and with an increase of the heat treatment temperature, the corrosion resistance tends to increase due to the formation of oxide and oxynitride on the sample surface. The ICR test results indicate that high temperature (450 ℃) heat treatment has detrimental effect on the electrical conductivity of samples due to the formation of a thick oxide dominated layer, while the samples heat treated at 300 ℃ only form the graded layers with suitable oxide amount which endows the coated specimens with a very low ICR value both before and after the corrosion tests.

Moreover, TiN coatings with different amounts of Ta addition were also prepared. After the corrosion tests in the H₂SO₄ solution with pH=3 at 70 ℃, the results reveal that Ti₁₅₀Ta₃₀N samples exhibit the highest corrosion resistance compared with the pristine TiN coated samples and the samples with different amount of Ta addition. The steady state current density of Ti₁₅₀Ta₃₀N samples after long term potentiostatic polarization at 0.6 V (vs Ag/AgCl) is 0.02 μA/cm² which is much lower than that of TiN coated samples. The Ti₁₅₀Ta₃₀N samples also presents a good electrical conductivity with low ICR values before and after the corrosion tests. These studies suggest that a suitable amount of oxygen or Ta incorporation into TiN is a feasible strategy to improve the corrosion resistance while maintaining considerable electrical conductivity of TiN samples.