Metallic PEM fuel cell bipolar plate (BPP) materials such as stainless steel typically suffer from insufficient corrosion resistance and/or interfacial contact resistance (ICR). Therefore, coatings with both high corrosion resistance and low ICR are required. Closed field unbalanced magnetron sputter ion plating (CFUBMSIP) was used to produce dense and well adhered TiN, TiN + C and Graphit-iC (TM) coatings on an AISI316L foil substrate. The ICR of the coatings was measured before and after a potentiostatic measurement at a cathodic standby PEMFC potential of 1 V/SHE. Following the corrosion measurement only the TiN + C, Graphit-iC (TM) and 10 nm Au coatings met the ICR and corrosion US DoE targets of <10 m Omega cm(2) and <1 mu Acm(-2). Potentiodynamic corrosion measurements of the applied coatings were carried out under the same conditions. The multilayer coating TiN + C showed improved corrosion resistance over single layer coatings of TiN and Graphit-iC (TM). Multilayer coatings and 10 nm Au coatings were identified as the best candidates for future research. (c) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.