The wear and corrosion resistance of magnesium alloys are both insufficient, and coating protection is one of the important ways to address this issue. Electroplating technology can be used to obtain multiple high-performance coatings, but magnesium alloys have high activity and often require the preparation of process layers before electroplating. The work aims to use cold spray composite electrodeposition technology to prepare double-layer structural coatings. Before the preparation of the coating, a hydrothermal synthesis method was used to load nano ZrN particles on the surface of GO sheets to prepare ZrN/GO composite phase for subsequent coating reinforcement. Subsequently, a copper based transition layer was prepared on the surface of the magnesium alloy with low-pressure cold spraying. Then, ZrN/GO nanocomposite particles and ZnNi plating solution were used as raw materials to electrodeposit a new type of ZnNi based composite coating (labeled as ZrN/GO-ZnNi) with synergistic reinforcement of zirconium nitride (ZrN) and graphene oxide (GO). The unmodified ZnNi coating and GO unmodified ZnNi coating were used as control samples in the experiment. The composition and structure of composite powders and coatings were characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS), and X-ray diffraction analysis (XRD). The wear behavior of several coatings in a 3.5wt.% NaCl solution was compared and evaluated with a microhardness tester, a multifunctional wear machine, and a 3D laser confocal microscope.
The SEM and XRD results showed that the hydrothermal method successfully loaded ZrN nanoparticles onto the surface of GO, and the resulting ZrN/GO composite phase could be successfully co-deposited in the ZnNi coating. The ZrN/GO composite phase significantly refined the crystal structure of the composite coating and effectively improved its density, which was conducive to enhancing the corrosion resistance and wear resistance of the coating. The microhardness of the ZnNi coating was relatively low, about 119HV100 g. After GO composite, the hardness of GO-ZnNi coating slightly increased to 138HV100 g, while the microhardness of ZrN/GO-ZnNi composite coating reinforced by ZrN/GO composite phase significantly increased, about 192HV100 g, with an increase of about 61%. The increase in hardness was beneficial for enhancing wear resistance.
Corrosion-wear experiments were conducted on three types of coatings in a 3.5wt.% NaCl solution, and the results showed that compared to the ZnNi coating and the GO-ZnNi coating, the ZrN/GO-ZnNi composite coating exhibited superior corrosion and wear resistance. The wear marks of ZrN/GO-ZnNi composite coating were very shallow, with no obvious corrosion products or debris on the surface of the wear marks. Its friction coefficient was as low as 0.20, and the wear rate was 7.6× 10‒6 mm3/(N·m). On the other hand, the surface of ZnNi coating exhibited obvious corrosion wear and abrasive wear characteristics, with high friction coefficient, poor lubrication, wide and deep wear marks, high wear rate, and cracking and damage of the corrosion product layer in the wear marks. The corrosion resistance and lubrication effect of the GO-ZnNi coating were relatively good, but the hardness of the coating was low, resulting in relatively low wear resistance. The excellent corrosion and wear characteristics of ZrN/GO-ZnNi composite coating are attributed to the dense and fine crystal structure of the coating, the lubricating properties of GO, and the strengthening effect of the hard nano ZrN dispersed phase.
Key words
magnesium alloy /
composite electroplating /
corrosion and wear /
cold spraying /
graphene oxide
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Funding
The National Natural Science Foundation of China (51709049)
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