Sintering of EPD Ceramic Coatings by Electron Beam
In order to obtain wear resistant coating as well as thermal barrier on metallic substrates by EPD, the conventional high temperature treatments are inapplicable; so we used an alternative method to densify and make the electrophoretic deposit more adherent. In this work we described a novel method to obtain EPD deposits with good density and adherence to stainless steel substrate. At first, we achieved stabilized alumina and alumina-zirconia based suspensions; to improve the adhesion of ceramic coating on metal, some stainless steel substrates were sandblasted, others were coated with titanium bond layers. Then the substrates were coated by EPD; finally, we used the electron beam to treat the ceramic coating-metallic substrate system on the surface; in this way we obtained adherent and dense EPD coatings. In order to evaluate the quality and the microstructure of the coating sintering, the samples were observed by scanning and transmission electron microscopy; pull tests showed the adhesion of treated EPD coating was about one hundred times higher than that of deposited EPD coating.