1990 Volume 39 Issue 12 Pages 697-708
Quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) and surface acoustic wave (SAW) techniques, which are capable of detecting a trace amount of weight changes in the magnitude of 10-9g·cm-2 from the changes of resonant frequency, are useful for monitoring a trace of corrosion of metal thin films. This article dealt with application of QCM and SAW to atmospheric corrosion and aqueous corrosion of metal thin films. Adsorption of water molecules, corrosion kinetics and corrosion mechanism of metal thin films were discussed on the basis of typical results obtained by QCM and SAW. Furthermore, it was shown that stress was one of predominant factors influencing the resonant frequency of QCM in the case of absorption of hydrogen or deuterium atoms into Pd thin film.
