Konstantin von Niessen Vapor Phase Deposition Using a Plasma Spray Process

Plasma spray-physical vapor deposition (PS-PVD) is a low pressure plasma spray technology recently developed by Sulzer Metco A

Stack Tests of Metal-Supported Plasma-Sprayed SOFC

The development of metal-supported plasma-sprayed SOFC has shown impressive progress in recent years. The main focus of this development was to create a functional stack. Integration of the cell into interconnects has been simplified leading to a lightweight cassette design with a fully integrated cells. Short stacks have been tested for proof of concept with good results at thermal and redox cycling. This shifted the main tasks of the development to scaling up the number of layers and increasing the lifetime of the stacks. In the project MS-SOFC new cassettes using the Plansee ITM alloy have been developed and new plasma spray processes for the electrode layers were introduced. Changes in the manufacturing processes also allowed for the reduction of the number of manufacturing processes for the cassette. Stacks were built up using the new developments. Two 10-layer stacks, one with a vacuum plasma sprayed electrolyte and one with a low pressure plasma sprayed electrolyte, were assembled to evaluate the power density and one 4-layer stack was used for long-term testing. Results of these experiments are presented in this paper

Investigations on the Nature of Ceramic Deposits in Plasma Spray-Physical Vapor Deposition

In Plasma Spray–Physical Vapor Deposition (PS-PVD) process, major fractions of the feedstock powder can be evaporated so that coatings are deposited mainly from the vapor phase. In this work, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) results indicate that such evaporation occurs significantly in the plasma torch nozzle and even nucleation and condensation of zirconia is highly possible there. Experimental work has been performed to investigate the nature of the deposits in the PS-PVD process, in particular coatings from condensate vapor and nano-sized clusters produced at two spraying distances of 1000 mm and 400 mm. At long spraying distance, columns in the coatings have pyramidal tops and very sharp faceted microstructures. When the spraying distance is reduced to 400 mm, the tops of columns become relatively flat and a faceted structure is not recognizable. XRD patterns show obvious preferred orientations of (110) and (002) in the coatings sprayed at 400 mm but only limited texture in the coatings sprayed at 1000 mm. Meanwhile, a non-line of sight coating was also investigated, which gives an example for pure vapor deposition. Based on these analyses, a vapor and cluster depositions are suggested to further explain the formation mechanisms of high-quality columnar-structured PS-PVD thermal barrier coatings which have already shown excellent performance in cyclic lifetime test

The 2016 Thermal Spray Roadmap

Considerable progress has been made over the last decades in thermal spray technologies, practices and applications. However, like other technologies, they have to continuously evolve to meet new problems and market requirements. This article aims to identify the current challenges limiting the evolution of these technologies and to propose research directions and priorities to meet these challenges. It was prepared on the basis of a collection of short articles written by experts in thermal spray who were asked to present a snapshot of the current state of their specific field, give their views on current challenges faced by the field and provide some guidance as to the R&D required to meet these challenges. The article is divided in three sections that deal with the emerging thermal spray processes, coating properties and function, and biomedical, electronic, aerospace and energy generation applications