A novel coating strategy towards improving interfacial adhesion strength of Cu–Sn alloy coated steel with vulcanized rubber

Abstract

Abstract A comparative assessment in terms of uniformity, coating coverage and coating deposition mechanism has been carried out for two different types of Cu–Sn coatings on steel substrate with varying Sn composition (2–6.5 wt%) deposited via immersion technique, viz. (i) single layer Cu–Sn coating and (ii) double layer coating consisting of a thin Cu strike layer followed by a Cu–Sn layer. Coating morphology, surface coverage, coating-substrate interface, and coating composition at surface and along the depth were studied using laser confocal microscope (OLS), scanning electron microscope (SEM) coupled with energy dispersive spectroscope (EDS), glow discharge optical emission spectroscopy (GDOES), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and cross-sectional transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Quantitative depth profiling using GDOES and surface compositional analysis via XPS suggested improvement in surface coverage in the case of double layer coatings. SEM-EDS and TEM analysis confirmed that the coating deposition was more uniform with sufficient coating penetration inside the deep roughness troughs resulting in compact and micro-porosity free interface for this type of coatings. Better adhesion strength with less variation in peel force and cohesive mode of fracture within the rubber was observed for the double layer coated samples during the peel test carried out on coated steel samples vulcanized with rubber. On the other hand, the single layer coated samples showed large variation in peel force with adhesive–cohesive or mixed mode of fracture at interface.