Conditions for nucleation and growth in the substrate boundary layer at plasma spray-physical vapor deposition (PS-PVD)

Abstract

Plasma spray-physical vapor deposition (PS-PVD) is a novel coating process based on plasma spraying. In contrast to conventional methods, deposition can come off not only from liquid splats but also from vapor phase. Moreover, there is the suggestion that also nano-sized clusters can be formed by homogeneous nucleation and contribute to deposition. In this work, the conditions for nucleation and growth of such nano-sized particles in the plasma flow around the substrate under PS-PVD conditions were investigated. A boundary layer kinetics model was coupled to an approach for homogeneous nucleation from supersaturated vapors and primary particle growth by condensation as well as secondary particle formation by coagulation. The results confirm the importance of the boundary layer on the substrate. However, since these particles are relatively small, their contribution to coating deposition is limited. Furthermore, microstructure or crystallographic orientations are unlikely to be affected by this cluster deposition.