Particles of the Fe-Al type (less than 50 µm in diameter) were sprayed onto the 045 steel substrate by means of the detonation method. The TEM, SAED and EDX analyses revealed that the Fe-Al particles have been partially melted in the experiment of coating formation. Particle undergone melting even within about 80% of its volume. Therefore, solidification of the melted part of particles was expected. Solidification differed significantly due to a large range of chemical composition of applied particles (from 15 at.% Al up to 63 at.% Al). A single particle containing 63 at.% Al was subjected to the detailed analysis, only. The TEM / SAED techniques revealed in the solidified part of particle three sub-layers: an amorphous phase, A ε , periodically situated FeAl + Fe2Al5 phases, and a non-equilibrium phase, Nε . A hypothesis dealing with the inter-metallic phases formation in such a single particle of the nominal composition 0 N = 0.63 is presented. At first, the solid / liquid system is treated as an interconnection: substrate liquid nonmelted particle part / / . Therefore, it is suggested that the solidification occurs simultaneously in two directions: towards a substrate and towards a non-melted part of particle. The solidification mechanism is referred to the Fe-Al meta-stable phase diagram. It is shown that the melted part of particle solidifies rapidly according to the phase diagram of meta-stable equilibrium and at a significant deviation from the thermodynamic equilibrium.
Mechanical components and tools in modern industry are facing increasing performance requirements leading to the growing need for advanced materials and thus, for modern frictional systems. In the last decades, the Pulsed Laser Deposition (PLD) has emerged as an unique tool to grow high quality mono- as well as multilayers surfaces in metallic/ceramic systems. Building up a knowledge base of tribological properties of industrially-scaled, room temperature deposited PLD hard coatings are the most important step for the application of these coatings in engineering design. Although single-layer coatings find a range of applications, there are an increasing number of applications where the properties of a single material are not sufficient. One way to surmount this problem is to use a multilayer coating. Application of metallic interlayers improves adhesion of nitride hard layer in multilayer systems, which has been used in PVD processes for many years, however, the PLD technique gives new possibilities to produce system comprising many bilayers at room temperature. Tribological coatings consisted of 2, 4 and 16 bilayers of Cr/CrN and Ti/TiN type were fabricated with the Pulsed Laser Deposition (PLD) technique in the presented work. It is found in transmission electron examinations on thin foils prepared from cross-section that both nitride-based multilayer structures studied are characterized by small columnar crystallite sizes and high defect density, what might rise their hardness but compromise coating adhesion. The intermediate metallic layers contained larger sized and less defective columnar structure compared to the nitride layers, which should improve the coatings toughness. Switching from single layer to multi-layer metal/nitride composition improved resistance to delamination.
Paper describes the results of Fe80Si11B9 amorphous ribbon investigation after pulsed laser interference heating and conventional annealing. As a result of interference heating periodically placed laser heated microareas were obtained. Structure characterisation by scanning and transmission electron microscopy showed in case of laser heated samples presence of crystalline nanostructure in amorphous matrix. Microscopy observations showed significant difference in material structure after laser heating – nanograin structure, and material after annealing – dendritic structure. Magnetic force microscopy investigation showed expanded magnetic structure in laser heated microareas, while amorphous matrix did not give magnetic signal. Change of magnetic properties was examined by magnetic hysteresis loop measurement, which showed that the laser heating did not have a significant influence on soft magnetic properties.