Development of electrically conductive plasma sprayed coatings on glass ceramic substrates

The production of functional coatings on glass or glass ceramic substrates is of outstanding interest in modern product development due to the specific thermophysical properties of glasses, like low or even negative CTE, low heat conductivity and high dimensional stability. Atmospheric plasma spraying (APS) is an adequate technology for the deposition of a wide variety of materials on glasses and opens new application fields for thermal spraying technology in engineering and consumer industries.Metals are the frequent solution to produce electrically conductive layers in thermal spraying operations. Concerning applications with glass ceramic as a substrate, an intermediate oxide ceramic coating is applied before depositing the metallic layer, so that the distribution of residual stresses in the composite caused during and after the deposition process due to the mismatch in the materials thermophysical properties is minimized. However, the electrical properties required for the developed coatings presented in this paper can be fulfilled using other spraying materials, like mixed phases of oxide ceramics and metal powders, or pure ceramic materials. In this way, mono-layer electrically conductive systems which ensure the required stability and adhesion of the coating can be developed, reducing as well production time and costs.In the proposed approach, the three systems, metal oxide layer-composites, ceramic-metal mixed layers and ceramic mono-layers as conductive coatings on glass ceramics were thermally sprayed with APS. The coatings were characterized in terms of residual stress distribution and electrical conductivity. The influence of the process parameters on the coating electrical and mechanical properties was analyzed using the design of experiments (DOE) methodology.