Abstract
Thermal sprayed protective coatings have gained widespread acceptance for a variety of industrials applications. This technology can be split into air plasma spraying (APS) and vacuum plasma spraying (VPS) according to the atmosphere during the deposition process. A number of advantages of VPS process such as avoiding oxidation or contamination of projectile, substrate and deposed coating; reducing the interaction between the plasma jet and the environment are obvious before the APS. The flexibility of process gives the largest possibility in aeronautics, gas turbine, medical field and other applications using different parameters, deposited and target materials. Low pressure plasma spraying (LPPS) is considered with some particular features so the range of pressure is about 10- 250 mbar, the dimensions of the plasma jet and its homogeneity are important. The adaptation of modern pumping and control systems allow to reduce the worked pressure to 0,1 mbar and to have conditions close to physical vapour deposition (PVD). This paper presents the results of the deposition of a copper alloy powder using the very low pressure plasma spraying performed by a new system developed in the LERMPS
