Metallic coatings can be produced easily with thermal spray and cold gas spray processes. However, when coating thicknesses below 50 μm are required for economical or technological reasons, the use of these well-established processes becomes more challenging. The company OBZ Innovation GmbH has developed spray processes that can produce metallic coatings with thicknesses of less than 20 μm. Such coatings are of interest for applications such as cold gas sprayed silver coatings with high purity and good electrical conductivity. Thinner sprayed coatings of such valuable materials have economic advantages, and the process may be competitive with commonly used thin film coating methods.

In this study, vacuum plasma spraying was used to apply hydroxyapatite-silver composite coatings on titanium substrates, which were then exposed to E. coli, Pseudomonas aeruginosa , and Staphylococcus aureus . The coatings exhibited excellent antibacterial performance ( K > 95%) against all three strains, attributed to the release of silver ions. Cytotoxicity, hemolysis, and simulated body fluid immersion tests showed that added silver affects neither the biocompatibility nor bioactivity of the hydroxyapatite, one of the most widely used medical implant materials due to its close chemical structure with natural bone.

In this study, interconnect layer of solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) was built up from spray-dried La 0.6 Sr 0.4 Co 0.2 Fe 0.8 O 3-δ (LSCF) and blended LSCF-Ag through atmospheric plasma spraying (APS). Microstructure and phase of each coating was analyzed through scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) respectively. Furthermore, bond strength, micro-hardness, thermal cycle test and oxidation test were performed and compared. The coatings prepared from spray-dried LSCF have higher porosity and cracks at inter-particle boundaries. However, the coatings with silver addition presented reduced cracks and porosity due to relatively high ductility of silver, resulting in higher mechanical properties.