High Productivity PS-PVD Process

Plasma spray-physical vapor deposition (PS-PVD) has been developed over the past years to produce columnar structured deposits for thermal barrier applications. The non line-of-sight process makes it possible to deposit coatings on complex components in a single production step. The fundamentals of PS-PVD have been well studied and the knowledge obtained is being used to scale up the process. This paper presents initial results on concepts that have been implemented to increase production rates as well as process efficiency.