A previous study [1] carried out to characterize the electron-beam cladding and alloying of plain carbon steel containing about 0.4wt% C with AISI 316 stainless steel showed that a surface duplex structure can be obtained from an initially fully austenitic clad material. The interface between the overlayer mat- erial and the substrate was characterized by a steep concentration gradient of the stainless steel alloy elements when the electron-beam parameters had been adjusted to clad the surface. In this case the chemical composition of the surface layer as well as the electrochemical corrosion behaviour were found to be practically identical to that of the original AISI 316