Comparative study on the wear resistance and corrosion resistance of NiW and NiCoW composite coatings with micro- and nano-SiC particles

Abstract

Wear resistance and corrosion resistance are important properties to evaluate the quality of metal matrix composite coatings. In this paper, micro-SiC (mSiC), and nano-SiC (nSiC) particles enhanced NiW and NiCoW composite coatings are direct current electrodeposited from sulfate-citrate electrolytes with SiC concentration from 0 to 80 g/L. This work provides a comparative study on the surface morphology, microhardness, wear resistance and corrosion resistance of NiW/mSiC, NiCoW/nSiC and NiCoW/mSiC composite coatings. Results show that mSiC and nSiC have a little effect on the microhardness of NiW and NiCoW coatings, which are all around 600 HV 0.05 . While high content of the incorporated mSiC particles can reduce the oxidative wear and peeling effect, then greatly decrease the wear rate of NiCoW composites from 15×10 -6 to 3×10 -6 mm 3 ∙m -1 ∙N -1 . In addition, the corrosion resistance of NiW and NiCoW can also be improved by mSiC and reaches the best properties at the SiC concentration of 10 g/L. In contrast, nSiC do not contribute to obvious enhancement of wear resistance and corrosion resistance due to the lower content of nSiC particles. It is notable that the corroded NiCoW/SiC and NiW/SiC coatings exhibit a novel network-like morphology. And the size of meshes of the network-like structure is related to the anti-corrosion property. • Micro-SiC and nano-SiC enhanced NiW and NiCoW coatings were electrodeposited • Micro-SiC are better for improvement of wear and corrosion resistance than nano-SiC • Micro-SiC can highly decrease oxidative wear and peeling of NiW and NiCoW coatings • A network-like nanostructure appears on the corroded NiW and NiCoW composite coatings