Quantitativeevaluationofthedecarburizationand.PDFVIP

Surface Coatings Technology 206 (2012) 4068–4074 Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Surface Coatings Technology journal homepage : www. elsevi er. com/ locate/ surfcoat Quantitative evaluation of the decarburization and microstructure evolution of WC–Co during plasma spraying Qing Zhan a,b, Ligen Yu c, Fuxing Ye a, Qunji Xue b, Hua Li b,⁎ a School of Materials Science and Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072, China b Division of Surface Engineering, Ningbo Institute of Materials Technology and Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Ningbo 315201, China c School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore 639798, Singapore a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t Article history: The major hurdle that limits extensive application of thermal sprayed WC–Co coatings is the undesirable Received 15 January 2012 phase changes from WC to W2C or even W due to loss of carbon. This study investigated quantitatively the Accepted in revised form 30 March 2012 decarburization of WC in both in-flight and coating formation stages during atmospheric plasma spraying. Available online 9 April 2012 The microstructure evolution of WC particles accompanying the decarburization was also investigated. Re- sults showed that decomposition and oxidation of WC to W2C predominantly occurred in the in-flight Keywords: WC–Co stage (75.82%), while remnant 24.18% occurred durin