The plasma electrolyte oxidation (PEO) process has been considered an environmentally friendly surface engineering method for improving the corrosion resistance of light weight metals. In this work, the corrosion resistance of commercially pure Al and PEO treated Al substrates were studied. The PEO layers were grown on commercially pure aluminum substrates using two different alkaline electrolytes with different addition concentrations of Si 3 N 4 nanoparticles (0, 0.5 and 1.5 gL −1 ) and different duty cycles (25%, 50%, and 80%) at a fixed frequency. The corrosion properties of PEO coatings were investigated by the potentiodynamic polarization and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy test in 3.5 wt.% NaCl solutions. It showed that the weight gains, layer thickness and surface roughness of the PEO grown oxide layer increased with increasing concentrations of Si 3 N 4 nanoparticles. The layer thickness, surface roughness, pore size, and porosity of the PEO oxide layer decreased with decreasing duty cycle. The layer thickness and weight gain of PEO coating followed a linear relationship. The PEO layer grown using the Na 2 B 4 O 7 ·10H 2 O contained electrolyte showed an excellent corrosion resistance and low surface roughness than other PEO coatings with Si 3 N 4 nanoparticle additives. It is noticed that the corrosion performance of PEO coatings were not improved by the addition of Si 3 N 4 nanoparticle in the electrolytic solutions, possibly due to its detrimental effect to the formation of a dense microstructure.Metals 2020, 10, 394 2 of 21 hardness restrict their wider application in crucial environments [1,2]. One of the efficient approaches to improve these disadvantages of aluminum is by surface modification for enhancing its anticorrosion performance, such as plasma electrolytic oxidation (PEO), ion implantation, laser surfacing, diffusion treatment, thermal spraying, physical vapor deposition (PVD), chemical vapor deposition (CVD) and conversion coatings such as anodizing, etc. Among several kinds of surface modification techniques, PEO is one of the most promising surface treatment methods [3], because it is an environmentally friendly and cost-effective technique for surface engineering and a suitable method for producing thick, hard and dense ceramic coatings on light metals.PEO, also known as micro-arc oxidation (MAO) [4], is an electrochemical induced plasma surface treatment process for creating oxide ceramic coatings on light metals [5,6]. PEO is a relatively new surface modification technique which can significantly improve the hardness, corrosion and wear resistance, adhesion strength, thermal and other desirable properties of Al alloys by efficiently growing thick alumina rich ceramic coatings [7][8][9][10]. During this process, plasma discharge can cause the formation of a highly adhesive and dense oxide layer on the substrate [11,12]. PEO is also considered an environmentally friendly and cost-effective coating process with real industrial applications [3,[13][14][15][16][17][18]. Several par...