Researchers from the Tokyo Institute of Technology presented a paper about cold-sprayed metal matrix composites that was named Best Paper of the ASM International ITSC 2019 conference in Japan.
The study focused on cold spray as a means of obtaining a diamondlike-carbon (DLC)-containing metal matrix composite. Composite films a millimeter thick with a low friction coefficient were fabricated by depositing DLC-coated copper and titanium particles by the cold spray technique.
For copper, DLC-coated particles were prepared with two different deposition times. Then, composite films were fabricated by cold spray using these particles. The thickness of the DLC-containing copper (Cu-DLC) composite film was 200 μm, and that of the DLC-containing titanium (Ti-DLC30) composite film was 252 μm. The introduction of DLC into the metal films was demonstrated by Raman spectroscopy.
The team conducted a sliding test using a ball to evaluate the sliding characteristic of each film. The Cu-DLC composite films deposited from thin DLC-coated copper particles behaved as a solid lubricant in the ball-on-disk test; and Cu-DLC composite films deposited from thick DLC-coated copper particles acted as an abrasive. For titanium particles, DLC was graphitized and acted as an abrasive.
Best Paper of ITSC 2019:
Metal Matrix Composites Using Diamond-like Carbon-Coated Particles Fabricated by Cold Spray Technique
Authors: Nana Okimura, Jongbeom Choi, Wataru Nakayama, Nobuhisa Ata, Yuki Hirata, Naoto Ohtake, Hiroki Akasaka, all from the Tokyo Institute of Technology.
