Electrosynthesis of Rare Earth Oxide Coatings for High Temperature Applications

Abstract

Rare earth oxides are commonly employed as dopants or coatings to improve the development and adherence of alumina scales. However, for practical applications, doping is difficult to control and the use of coatings is preferred. Nevertheless the thickness of such coatings is relatively limited for long term exposures at high temperatures and thicker coatings are hence required. With this in mind, the cathodic electrodeposition technique has been investigated in this work. The results show that deposits of about 20 µm RExOOHycoatings can be obtained on a Ni superalloy in 20 min. The applied current density and time significantly influence the microstructure, thickness, crystallite size and number of oxygen vacancies of the coatings. Their needle-like microstructure is indicative of non negligible amounts of rare earth hydroxides. However, the hydroxide peaks overlap with the oxide peaks in the X-ray diffraction (XRD) patterns. XRD also suggests that the coatings are either amorphous or of nanocrystalline nature, as supported by Raman spectroscopy. Their multicracked morphology is related to the shear stresses between the coating and the substrate, hydrogen bubbling and mostly by drying of the coatings in air. The number of cracks is increased after a heat treatment which also allows full crystallization of the RExOycoating and pre-oxidation (α-Al2O3) of the superalloy. The combined effect of both oxides results in an improved oxidation resistance of the Ni-base superalloy at 1100°C in air.