Latest Researches Advances of Plasma Spraying: From Splat to Coating Formation

The plasma spray process with solid feedstock, mainly ceramics powders, studied since the sixties is now a mature technology. The plasma jet and particle in-flight characterizations are now well established. The use of computer-aided robot trajectory allows spraying on industrial parts with complex geometries. Works about splat formation have shown the importance of: the substrate preheating over the transition temperature to get rid of adsorbates and condensates, substrate chemistry, crystal structure and substrate temperature during the whole coating process. These studies showed that coating properties strongly depend on the splat formation and layering. The first part of this work deals with a summary of conventional plasma spraying key points. The second part presents the current knowledge in plasma spraying with liquid feedstock, technology developed for about two decades with suspensions of particles below micrometers or solutions of precursors that form particles a few micrometers sized through precipitation. Coatings are finely structured and even nanostructured with properties arousing the interest of researchers. However, the technology is by far more complex than the conventional ones. The main conclusions are that models should be developed further, plasma torches and injection setups adapted, and new measuring techniques to reliably characterize these small particles must be designed.