Microstructural and mechanical characterizations of a novel HVOF-sprayed WC-Co coating deposited from electroless Ni–P coated WC-12Co powders

In this research, a novel WC-Co coating was deposited from electroless Ni–P coated WC-12Co powders using high velocity oxygen fuel (HVOF) process. Toward this purpose, an electroless Ni–P plating process was used to develop a uniform Ni–P layer on the surface of WC-12Co powders. The obtained Ni–P coated powders were then used as HVOF feedstock material. Microstructural characteristics of the Ni–P coated WC-12Co powders and the resultant coating, which is denoted as Ni–P modified coating, were investigated using X-ray diffractometry (XRD) and high resolution field emission scanning electron microscopy (HR FE SEM). The micro-hardness, elastic modulus and fracture toughness measurements were executed to evaluate the mechanical properties of the Ni–P modified coating. For comparison, the same experiments were performed on two conventional HVOF sprayed WC-12Co and WC-17Co coatings. The Ni–P modified WC-12Co coating showed a dense structure with extremely low porosity of ∼0.3% which was much lower than that of WC-12Co and WC-17Co coatings. Besides, it was observed that the Ni–P modified coating has undergone negligible decarburization of 2.6% as compared to conventional WC-12Co and WC-17Co coatings with that of 16.3 and 17.6%. The Ni–P modified coating showed the maximum hardness of ∼11.45 GPa, while lower hardness values of 10.98 and 10.59 GPa were measured for the WC-12Co and WC-17Co coatings. The fracture toughness of Ni–P modified WC-12Co coating was found to be 9.86 MPa m1/2, indicating 71.2 and 61.1% increase in comparison with WC-12Co and WC-17Co coatings, respectively