Plasma Sprayed Ceramic Coatings with Fine Feedstock

As reported in our previous studies on suspension plasma spray process, deposition of finer particles (1-10 micron in their diameter) had shown high possibility to obtain high quality ceramic coatings with various micro structures. In this study, spraying of finer ceramic powders with various diameter in the range of 1-10 micron was carried out. There are difficulties in sending/injecting such a fine feed stock into plasma jet as known. These fine powders were sprayed by an axial feed plasma spray system and the modified powder feeder. Ceramic coatings in porous/dense were successfully obtained with the coating system and some evaluation of their micro structure and basic properties were examined. Structure of the coatings showed a good agreement with our previous results in the SPS coatings.