Sintering ceramics have been widely used in industries which require electrical and mechanical properties. Thermal sprayed ceramics coatings are also applied for the industries, however the coating which has micron size pores are limited their applications due to inferior electrical and mechanical properties compared with sintering bulk. To expand thermal sprayed ceramics coating applications, dense coatings prepared by suspension plasma spraying are widely studied. Dense Al 2 O 3 coatings are applicable to fabricating equipment for electronics devices, such as ESC. There are no reports regarding electric properties of plasma sprayed dense Al 2 O 3 coating with different spray conditions. In this study to achieve a electric properties of dense Al 2 O 3 coating, spray parameters such as plasma power, gas flow rate and spray distance are investigated. Suspension materials prepared with three microns Al 2 O 3 powder are sprayed by high power suspension plasma spraying system. Spray conditions, plasma power, gas flow rate, and stand-off distance affect the coating density, crystal phase, and mechanical and electrical properties. Mechanism of coating formation by plasma spraying with fine powder suspensions will be discussed based on the findings. Al 2 O 3 coatings obtained by the plasma spraying is applied for application to application utilizing the electrical insulation properties of such electronics devise manufacturing equipment components is proceeding.

Metal and polymer additive manufacturing is advancing on several applications. On the other hand, materials cermet such as WC/Co for functional structure molding by additive manufacturing are under studying. There are few reports for WC cemented carbide additive manufacturing process by forming with polymer binder then sintering. This indirect process has difficulties to make high precision functional parts due to shape control during additional sintering process. Direct forming is desired for high precision parts. However, factors and/or mechanism to achieve direct formed functional structure have been unclear in many aspects. In this study, the process conditions of the direct selective laser melting were investigated to achieve dense and hard WC cemented carbide mold parts. The optimization of laser melting conditions for WC/Co agglomerated and sintered powder was examined. In order to forming a dense and high hardness parts, the optimum conditions between powder preparation and laser energy density which related with laser power, scan speed and spot diameter were appeared by this experiments. Moldings more than 1500HV are achieved at low laser energy density. However, some of pores were observed in moldings. In addition, the dense molding could be obtained by high laser energy density. This means optimum dense functional WC cemented carbide molding is available by optimization of the molding condition. It is applicable for growing industries like automotive, aviation and cutting tool.

This study investigates the influence of plasma spray conditions on the structural, mechanical, and plasma-erosion properties of yttrium oxide coatings. Powder feed rate, plasma power, and primary particle size appear to have little effect on plasma erosion properties, hardness, surface morphology, and coating structure. However, a Y 2 O 3 coating produced with fine powder retained a smooth erosion surface despite its porosity and relatively low hardness.

In this study, high-power axial-injection suspension plasma spraying is used to synthesize yttrium oxide coatings from fine powder slurries. The coatings are assessed based on microstructure, hardness, and porosity and compared with coatings produced by other spraying methods. Resistance to erosion from CF 4 containing plasma is also investigated. Test results show that the suspension plasma sprayed Y 2 O 3 coatings are superior in terms of density, hardness, uniformity, and plasma erosion resistance. They also retain a smoother surface when exposed to plasma that contains CF 4 .

This study shows how the impact resistance of WC-Cr 3 C 2 -Ni coatings can be improved by as much as an order of magnitude through the addition of an undercoat with suitable hardness. It also investigates the effect of powder modifications and substrate hardness. Undercoats with Vickers hardness ranging from400-600 HV provided the biggest increases in impact resistance, but at around 700 HV and above, they are shown to have the opposite effect. The influence of the process used to apply the undercoat and the magnitude of the impact load used for testing are also considered in the study.

Cavitation erosion is one of the serious problems that affect lifetime and performance on hydraulic machineries and its components. Surface modification techniques is required to apply to hydraulic components, such as water turbine and radial flow pump, in general. Here, the techniques, which can easily be applied to large area, is must be required for actual applications in the fields. Thus, thermal sprayed WC cermet coatings with high abrasion resistance under wet conditions are one of the promising solutions as the protective coatings against cavitation erosion. In this study, WC/Cr 3 C 2 /Ni and WC/Co/Cr coatings prepared using a high-velocity oxygen fuel (HVOF) spraying have been evaluated by a magneto-striction vibratory apparatus to investigate the cavitation erosion resistance. The microstructures of the sprayed coatings after the cavitation erosion test have been analyzed by SEM to clarify the erosion mechanism. It has been found that the cavitation erosion resistance of the WC cermet coatings is significantly affected by primary particle size of WC, powder compositions and spray conditions. In the WC/10wt%Co/4wt%Cr, the coating with WC average particle size of 6.3 µm sprayed by optimized spray conditions achieved the highest cavitation erosion resistance than the other WC coatings as well as base materials of stainless steel used in the actual components.

High purity oxide ceramic powders of alumina (Al 2 O 3 ) and yttria (Y 2 O 3 ) for plasma spraying have been developed to apply to semiconductor and flat-panel-display (FPD) production equipments. The ceramic coatings onto inside chamber wall of the equipments are required to have highly erosion resistance against CF containing plasma, widely used in dry etching process for micro-fabrications of the devices. Yttria is increasingly used in this application due to the high resistance compared to alumina. It is found that the yttria coating formed from agglomerated-and- sintered powder consisting of large primary particle has smoother eroded surface. Considering that particle deposition onto the devices, this coating will be effective to decrease generation of large sized particle, which is easily deposit onto the devices. Electric insulating properties of the coatings are also investigated to apply to electrostatic chuck. Electric breakdown voltage of yttria coatings is almost comparable to that of alumina coatings. However, yttria is difficult to apply due to its lower mechanical strength. Using smaller powder as feedstock is effective to improve the electric properties and influence of coating purity is lower than the powder size.

Erosion properties of high purity alumina (Al 2 O 3 ) and yttria (Y 2 O 3 ) coatings prepared by plasma spraying have been investigated against process plasma in semiconductor and liquid-crystal-display (LCD) production equipments for dry etching. Studies on plasma power dependency have revealed that yttria coatings have showed higher anti-plasma erosion resistance than alumina coating as well as sintered alumina bulk at every condition. Although yttria coatings are inferior to sintered yttria bulk, the difference of the resistance becomes smaller with increasing plasma power. This result positively promotes the application of the yttria spray coating because of increasing plasma power in actual process. Erosion properties of the coatings against Ar/CF 4 /O 2 plasma, whose composition is increasingly being used in commercial process, are also investigated where physical etching effect becomes stronger than the typical CF 4 /O 2 case. It has been found that order of durability (yttria bulk > yttria coatings > alumina bulk > alumina coating) is independent of the gas species used in this study. The mechanism of the plasma erosion is discussed through micro-structural analysis of the eroded surfaces.

The structural and mechanical properties, in terms of surface roughness, hardness and wear resistance, of WC/12wt%Co coatings are investigated as a function of powder properties, such as powder size and WC grain size, as well as high velocity oxygen-fuel (HVOF) spray conditions. It has been found that the WC/12wt%Co coatings with relatively smoother surface, about 2 µm in average surface roughness (Ra), retaining high wear resistance can be formed by optimizing the powder and spray parameters. Further, we have found that powder size can control the surface roughness over a wide range; from about 2 to 7 µm (about Δ5 µm) in Ra. On the other hand, Ra changed only about Δ1 µm or more when changing spray conditions, such as barrel length and spray distance.

Application of plasma sprayed ceramic coatings with a high purity of more than 99.9% has been sharply increasing in semiconductor and liquid-crystal-display (LCD) production equipments for dry etching, sputtering and ashing in the last few years. The size of the equipments becomes larger with increasing Si wafer size and the LCD size that promotes the replacement from conventional techniques, such as alumite film and bulk ceramics, to plasma spray coatings, where the high durability against the plasma erosion (anti-plasma erosion resistance) is required. However, as far as we know, no systematic studies on the plasma-erosion properties are reported. In this work, durability of plasma sprayed ceramic coatings against CF 4 /O 2 plasma are investigated by reactive ion etching (RIE) system and are compared to that of the conventional techniques. The erosion mechanism is also discussed through the micro-structural analysis.