Abstract

A cleaning intervention is introduced to control the growth defect of Cr/GLC multi-layered coating to avoid premature failure in the deep-sea environment. The results demonstrated that the introduction of the cleaning intervention significantly decreased the penetrating defect density as expected, together without deteriorating the superior mechanical and tribocorrosion properties. The localised corrosion resistance was improved dramatically in the simulated deep-sea environment. It was illustrated that controllable defect engineering can be an effective strategy for improving the anti-tribocorrosion performance of GLC coatings for harsh deep-sea applications.