Liquid metals-such as lead (Pb) or lead-bismuth (PbBi) are used as reactor core coolants for accelerator driven systems (ADS) proposed for high-level radioactive waste transmutation. Compatibility of steels with liquid PbBi is a key problem because steels are attacked by dissolution of the components in PbBi, so it has to form a stable coating on steel surface. There are many methods to prepare anti-corrosion coatings on steel, such as hot dipping, pack cementation, plasma spaying, and physical vapor deposition (PVD). Compared with other methods, the PVD method is easy to control the thickness of the coating and the obtained coatings are dense which is crucial to the anti-corrosion ability of the coatings. In this letter, PVD aluminum coatings are developed on the surface of T91 steel and different heat-treatment atmosphere is used to adjust the microstructure, aluminum content, and the phase of the coatings. It is found that the coatings have good adherence ability with steel. The aluminum content and the phase of the coating can be adjusted by the heat-treatment atmosphere. Corrosion tests are performed in oxygen-saturated liquid PbBi at 550 oC for 1 000 h, the phase and composition of the coating do not change drastically. All the results indicate that the PVD is a useful method to prepare coatings on the surface of steel used in liquid PbBi.