Engineers from the University of Nevada and ASB Industries reported on a study of a tantalum coating deposited on an aluminum substrate by cold spraying. Tantalum is one the few materials that possesses excellent corrosion resistance in acidic, salt, and organic chemical environments. However, due to cost limitations, application of this material is limited to extreme corrosion conditions. Tantalum coatings have been sought as a means to protect chemical processing equipment and electronics.
Optimum density and impurity levels are lacking in traditional plasma spray coatings, and this limits the usefulness of tantalum coating. However, cold spray has emerged as an attractive technique to produce dense tantalum coatings.
In this study, the tantalum coating was deposited on an aluminum substrate by cold spraying. Subsequently, the deposited coating was subjected to heat treatment cycles. The evolution of microstructure and micro-hardness of the coating as a function of heat treatment was studied, and its electrochemical corrosion behavior as a function of heat treatment was also presented.
Pankaj Kumar, Bhaskar Vadlamani, Arpith Siddaiah, Prasad Kalvala, Pradeep Menezes, Mano Misra, University of Nevada, Reno;
Reza Daroonparvar, Charles Kay, ASB Industries Inc.
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