Effects of duty ratio on properties of Ni–P–(sol)Al2O3 coating prepared by pulse-assisted chemical deposition

Abstract

With the wide application of nanocomposite protective coatings in various fields, there are higher requirements for their properties. At the same time, the traditional chemical deposition and electrodeposition processes have defects with different degrees. Nanocomposite coating was prepared by pulse current assisted chemical deposition process, which has the advantages of effectively improving the chemical deposition rate and ensuring the uniformity and compactness of the deposition layer surface morphology. In this paper, the effect of different duty ratios on Ni–P-(sol)Al2O3 nanocomposite deposition was studied. The surface morphology, composition, hardness, wear resistance and elastoplastic mechanical properties of the nanocomposite coating were tested through experiments. The experimental results showed that, when the duty ratio of pulse current was 20%, the prepared Ni–P-(sol)Al2O3 nano-composite deposition layer has the best performance, and its deposition rate reached 45.99 μm/h, hardness value was 629 HV, friction coefficient was 0.395, wear-width was 126.33 μm, Young modulus was 135.216 GPa, elastic recovery ratio he/hmax reached the maximum value of 0.3976, H3/E2 reached the maximum value of 0.0505 GPa. Compared with the coatings prepared by the traditional chemical deposition process, it is found that both coatings show good compactness and uniformity. However, the pulse-assisted chemical deposition method is significantly superior to the latter in hardness and wear resistance. The deposition layer prepared by pulse-assisted chemical deposition not only has a uniform and compact surface, but also has high hardness, good toughness and optimal wear resistance.