Ultrafast thermal plasma physical vapor deposition of yttria-stabilized zirconia for novel thermal barrier coatings

This research aims to develop advanced thermal plasma spraying technology for the next-generation thermal barrier coatings (TBCs) with a high power hybrid plasma spraying system. By using thermal plasma physical vapor deposition (TP-PVD), various functional structured yttria-stabilized zirconia (YSZ) coatings were deposited. Parameters, such as powder feeding rate, hydrogen gas concentration, and total mass flow rate of the plasma gas, were optimized, and their influences on the evaporation of YSZ powder were investigated. Ultrafast deposition of a thick coating was achieved at a rate of over 450 mu m/min. The deposited porous coating has a low thermal conductivity of 0.7 W/mK and the dense coating with interlaced t' domains possesses a high nanohardness of 27.85 GPa and a high reflectance. These characteristics show that the TP-PVD technique is a very valuable process for manufacturing novel TBCs.