The global economic growth has triggered a dramatic increase in the demand for resources over the last few years, resulting in steady price increases for energy and raw materials. In the gas turbine manufacturing sector, process optimizations of cost-intensive production steps involve a heightened savings potential and form the basis for securing future competitive advantages in the market economy. In this context, the atmospheric plasma spraying (APS) process for thermal barrier coatings (TBC) has been optimized. A constraint for the APS coating process optimization is the use of the existing coating equipment. Furthermore, the current coating quality and characteristics are not allowed to change in order to avoid new qualification and testing. Using experience in atmospheric plasma spraying and empirically gained data, the process optimization plan included the variation of e.g. the plasma gas composition and flow rate, the electrical power, the arrangement and angle of the powder injectors to the plasma jet, the grain size distribution of the spray powder and the plasma torch movement procedure like spray distance, offset and iteration. In particular, plasma properties (enthalpy, velocity, temperature), powder injection conditions (injection point, injection speed, grain size distribution,) as well as the coating lamination (coating pattern, spraying distance) are examined. The optimized process and resulting coating was compared to the current situation by several diagnostics methods. The improved process provides significantly lower costs by achieving the requirement of comparable coating quality. Furthermore, a contribution was made to a better comprehension of the atmospheric plasma spraying of ceramics and a method for future process developments was defined.

Although the history of using the thermal inductively coupled RF-plasma (ICP) for spraying processes has been started in the early sixties, up to now all but no industrial applications are known. ICP-spraying of coatings has been investigated in various labs for interesting applications like coatings for medical implants and electrodes for SOFC´s. All the processes are VPS-applications. This on one hand of course is caused by the oxygen affinity of the used materials, on the other hand the current view in thermal spraying is, that very dense and excellent adherent coatings can be sprayed only by increasing the particles velocity. In contrast to this mind this contribution will try to show, that also under atmospheric and low vacuum conditions, i.e. using a laminar flowing plasma with nearly no acceleration of the axially injected particles, it becomes possible to spray coatings with comparable values of porosity and bond strength but special features that can not be produced with common technologies. This can be explained by the changed condition of heating, deformation and cooling down of the considerably larger particles. Actual examples are given for various spraying materials like ceramics and hard magnetic materials.

In the present work ceramic particles (Al 2 O 3 , YSZ) are sprayed onto steel substrates using a radio frequency inductively coupled atmospheric plasma spray process (IC APS). Because of the low plasma velocity and the large plasma volume large particles can be completely melted. The particles reach the substrate with low velocities (in the order of 10 m/s). So, a special kind of deformation can be observed. Some characteristic values of impact and deformation are also quite different from some other thermal spraying technologies. Of course, that has an strong influence on the coating properties. It is shown, that a high kinetic energy of impinging particles is not an essential assumption for a high bond strength and a low porosity of the coatings. IC Plasma sprayed particle splats are investigated and compared with DC and HVOF sprayed ones. The influence of the particle impact and deformation on the coating properties is demonstrated. It is shown, that in spite of the low particle velocities coatings can be sprayed by IC APS with comparable quality, but with quite different coating properties such as the crystalline structure.

DC plasma spraying has been widely recognized as a quick and economic way to produce all kinds of coatings (metals, alloys, and ceramics) for a variety of applications. There has been a growing interest in using radio frequency (RF) plasmas. Studies have been reported on characterization of plasma-sprayed coatings by TEM, including thermal barrier coatings, alumina coatings, and Ni-Al coatings. There are, however, no detailed studies reported on microstructural comparisons of coatings prepared by RF and DC plasma spraying. In this paper, XRD, SEM, TEM, polarizing OM, four-point bending fracture, and molten particle impact behavior are used to clarify microstructural differences between the RF- and DC-coatings. The results showed that the microstructures were much different for both cases, especially in the interfacial region between the coatings and the substrates. Paper includes a German-language abstract.