Cavitation erosion and jet impingement erosion can result in a great loss of materials. NiTi alloy is a very promising candidate to acquire cavitation erosion resistance and jet impingement erosion resistance because of its superelasticity. Due to the high cost and poor workability of NiTi alloy, many people tried to overcome such drawbacks by preparing NiTi coatings on the basis of deteriorating the good properties as little as possible. From the aspect of the application of NiTi coating, the erosion resistance should be evaluated comprehensively. One of these evaluations involves the comparison of cavitation erosion resistance and jet impingement erosion resistance of NiTi. This evaluation has not been made thus far. Thus, in this study, the NiTi coating was prepared by air plasma spraying (APS) using pre-alloyed NiTi powder. Its microstructure, chemical composition and phase transformation were identified. Cavitation erosion behavior and jet impingement erosion behavior of the as-sprayed NiTi coating were compared. The results showed that the coating exhibited better jet impingement erosion resistance than cavitation erosion resistance. This was attributed to the oxides, impurities, cracks and pores that existed in the coating, whose effects on deteriorating the cavitation erosion were far greater than those worsening the jet impingement erosion. Full article

A good quality of SiO₂/SiC coating was successfully fabricated on carbon fiber fabric by a novel electrolytic plasma spraying method, where Na₂SiO₃·9H₂O aqueous solution was used as an electrolyte. In this study, we discussed the effect of spraying distance on the coating. The microstructure and composition coating were characterized by scanning electron microscopy with energy-dispersive spectroscopy and XPS, respectively. An effective coating can be easily prepared within several tens of seconds through this approach by adjusting the spraying distance. Results show that the sample oxidation resistance temperature was up to 1000 °C while the spraying distance was 15 mm, and tensile strength increased by 73 MPa after heat treatment at 900 °C for 20 min. The study provides additional insights into the feasibility of modification of carbon fiber fabric. Meanwhile, this method can be expected to extend to the fabrication of other oxide coatings or the modification of the surfaces of other complicated and/or large-scale easily oxidized materials. Full article

In this paper, a nickel-based amorphous composite coating was obtained on the carbon steel surface by the laser cladding process. The thermal field and stress distribution were simulated by using ANSYS finite element software where the moving heat source and powder feeding were modelled by the “Element birth and death” method. The simulation results were verified by comparing the cross-sectional profile of fusion lines and X-ray stress measurements, respectively. The results on thermal field showed that the cooling rate of the coating could reach up to 10389.15 K/s and it gradually decreased from the outside surface to the interior, which promoted the formation of amorphous phase. The simulated stress field showed that the coating was in the state of tensile stress after cladding and the longitudinal stress was larger than the transverse stress. The coating was experienced with tensile plastic deformation along the laser scanning direction, which resulted in longitudinal residual stress. A higher stress concentration was occurred between the coating layer and substrate, which increased the susceptibility of crack formation. The test results on transverse residual stress were generally consistent with the simulation. On the contrary, the measured longitudinal stress was nearly close to zero, which was not in agreement with the model due to the formation of cracks. Full article

The sol-gel method was used to synthesize the silver doped hydroxyapatite (Ag:HAp) gels in order to produce the antifungal composite layers. The pure Ti disks were used as the substrate for the composite layers. Important information about suspensions used to make Ag:HAp composite layers were obtained from an ultrasonic technique. The identification of the phase composition of the Ag:HAp composite layers was accomplished X-ray diffraction (XRD). The morphology and the thickness of the layers was evaluated using scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The uniform distribution of the constituent elements (Ag, Ca, P, and O) in both analyzed samples was observed. The antifungal activity of the samples against Candida albicans ATCC 10231 microbial strain were investigated immediately after their preparation and six months later. SEM and confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM) images showed that the composite layers at the two time intervals exhibited a strong antifungal activity against Candida albicans ATCC 10231 and completely inhibited the biofilm formation. Full article

The adhesion strength between thin films has a significant effect on performance of micro-devices. It is introduced that the effects of three pre-treatment methods: acid, pulse reverse current and anodic current, on the adhesion performance of electrodeposited Ni films on Ni substrate. The adhesion strength, surface and fracture morphology of the Ni films were investigated. The dense oxide films on the Ni substrate were removed effectively by using the anodic dissolution current method in the acidic chloride solutions. Meanwhile, the Ni films treated with specific treatment conditions produced different roughness, which was responsible for the improved adhesion strength. The adhesion strength of the Ni films increased up to 629.8 MPa when substrates were treated with anodic current density of 30 mA/cm² for 10 min, which is nearly two times higher than that of films treated by 5 vol % HCl for 10 min. The results indicate that the anodic current treatment method effectively improves the adhesion strength of Ni films. Full article

Measuring the thickness and the composition of precious metal thin films is a challenging task. Currently, the available techniques for thickness measurements are either destructive or need heavy assumptions on the nature of the sample, relying on information that are not always available with sufficient accuracy. In this paper we propose a new methodology based on X-ray microanalysis that can complement, with better lateral resolution, the use of X-ray Fluorescence, the most widely employed technique for measuring the thickness of electrodeposited coatings. The proposed method employs a combination of energy dispersive microanalysis spectra acquisition and Monte Carlo simulation. The effectiveness of the technique has been demonstrated by the measure of the thickness and the composition of a thin 24 kt gold electroplated film that contained small amount of nickel. Results have been validated by comparing data with those obtained by X-ray fluorescence and the scanning electron microscopy of metallographic cross-sections. Full article

Friction and wear become significant at small scale lengths, particularly in MEMS/NEMS. Nanopatterns are regarded as a potential approach to solve these problems. In this paper, we investigated the friction behavior of nanopatterned silicon surfaces with a periodical rectangular groove array in dry and wear-less single-asperity contact at the nanoscale using molecular dynamics simulations. The synchronous and periodic oscillations of the normal load and friction force with the sliding distance were determined at frequencies defined by the nanopattern period. The linear load dependence of the friction force is always observed for the nanopatterned surface and is independent of the nanopattern geometry. We show that the linear friction law is a formal Amontons’ friction law, while the significant linear dependence of the friction force-versus-real contact area and real contact area-versus-normal load captures the general features of the nanoscale friction for the nanopatterned surface. Interestingly, the nanopattern increases the friction force at the nanoscale, and the desired friction reduction is also observed. The enlargement and reduction of the friction critically depended on the nanopattern period rather than the area ratio. Our simulation results reveal that the nanopattern can modulate the friction behavior at the nanoscale from the friction signal to the friction law and to the value of the friction force. Thus, elaborate nanopatterning is an effective strategy for tuning the friction behavior at the nanoscale. Full article

A multi-walled carbon nanotube (MWCNT)-coated indium tin oxide (ITO) slide was used as a platform for the growth of a silver dendrite (Ag-D) film using cyclic voltammetry. The particular dendritic nanostructures were formed by the diffusion-limited-aggregation model due to the potential difference between the MWCNTs and the ITO surface. The Ag-D-coated ITO film was then used for the catalytic degradation of methyl orange (MO) and methylene blue (MB) under static aqueous conditions. The network structure of the Ag-D allows the efficient diffusion of MO and MB, and consequently enhances the catalytic performance. Since the thin film is much easier to use for the post-treatment of powder catalysts, the proposed method shows great potential in many catalytic applications. Full article