The paper reports on the corrosion behavior of carbon steel coated with thin SiOx-like oxide films The SiOx-like coatings were deposited by plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) and then thickness was varied between 20 and 200 nm The coated carbon steel interfaces were investigated for their corrosion protection efficiency when immersed in an aqueous saline solution of 3% NaCl FTIR measurements and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) experiments revealed that thin SiOx-like coating layers (20 nm thick) do not prevent the carbon steel from corrosion while thicker silica layers (d >= 100 nm) protect efficiently carbon steel interfaces in highly saline media with a protection efficiency of about 96% for a 200 nm thick coating (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd All rights reserved