Investigation on surface figuration and microstructure of laser glazed nanostructure zirconia thermal barrier coatings

CO2 continuous wave laser beam had been applied to the laser glazing of plasma sprayed nanostructure zirconia thermal barrier coatings. The effects of luser glazing processing parameters on the surface figuration and microstructure change had been carried out, the microstructure and phase composition of the coatings had been evaluated by the scanning electron microscope (SEM) and the X-ray diffraction (XRD). SEM observation indicates that the microstructure of the as-glazed coating could be altered from single columnar structure to a combination of the columnar grain and fine equiaxed grain with the different laser glazing conditions. XRD analysis illustrates that the predominance phase of the as-glazed coating is the metastable tetragonal phase, and the glazed coating with the single columnar structure has shown the clear orientation in (220) and (400) peaks while the other coatings do not show that.