Synthesis and microstructure, properties characterization of Ni-Ti-Cu/Cu-Al functionally graded coating on Mg-Li alloy by laser cladding

Abstract The bottleneck challenge of preparing laser cladded coating on Mg-Li alloys is the evaporation and dilution of substrate, which seriously affect the performance of coatings. In order to solve these deficiencies, Ni-Ti-Cu/Cu-Al functionally graded coating was proposed in this work. The graded coating with excellent performance was successfully prepared on Mg-Li alloy. More remarkable, the top-layer was not affected by dilution and substrate evaporation. The top-layer was mainly composed of Ni3Ti and NiTi intermetallic compounds, as well as TiNi0.8Cu0.2 phase that dispersed on the surface of Ni3Ti. Typical hypoeutectic structure was found in the interlayer, which was composed of Li3Mg7 and CuMg2. Furthermore, the corrosion and wear resistance of Mg-Li alloy were greatly improved. Specifically, the wear volume of the top-layer and interlayer is reduced by 98.04% and 82.41% than that of substrate, respectively. The corrosion potential of the top-layer (-242 mV) and the interlayer (-991 mV) are 1311 mV and 562 mV higher than that of the substrate (-1553 mV), while the corrosion current density of the top-layer (2.71 × 10-7 A·cm−2) and the interlayer (1.93 × 10-6 A·cm−2) are about three and two orders of magnitude lower than that of the substrate (2.53 × 10-4 A·cm−2).