Heat-Treatment of Aluminium-Nickel Composite Cold Sprayed Coating

Intermetallic compounds, especially aluminides, show good high-temperature strength, oxidation resistance, high melting points, and thus have received considerable attention as potential substitutes for superalloys in high-temperature applications. Aluminides are especially interesting because they are stable up to the critical temperature of ordering, which is close to the melting temperature. In the Al-Ni system, the most studied intermetallics are Ni3Al, NiAl and NiAl3. In the presented study, Al and Ni powders were mixed together with Al2O3 in various proportions to produce dense coatings by low-temperature cold spraying. Two types of post-deposition treatments were applied to produce aluminides, namely furnace heating and resistance spot welding. The former caused a long time diffusion while the latter a self-propagating high temperature synthesis. Both heating methods enabled formations of intermetallic phases. However, the furnace heating provides high porosity. The microstructure of the samples was analyzed by SEM (scanning electron microscope), EDS (energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy) and XRD (X-ray diffraction) together with microhardness measurements.