Thermal Spray Coatings for Tribological Applications

Thermal spray processes represent an important and rapidly growing group of surface modification technologies for preparation of predominantly metal, hardmetal, and ceramic coatings with typical thickness in the range 100–500 μm and wide use in tribological applications.
Thermal spray processes represent an important and rapidly growing group of surface modification technologies which uses solid feedstock materials for coating formation. The variety of coating materials includes metals and alloys, hardmetals, ceramics, and polymers, the latter are rather an exception. The process of coating preparation by thermal spraying according to the state of the art is illustrated in Fig. 1, showing the deposition of a hardmetal coating by high-velocity oxy-fuel (HVOF) spraying.