Nanostructured protective coatings for harsh environments

保护涂层（PC）的进步带来了重要的挑战和机遇，这些挑战和机遇对许多工业部门的可持续发展以及经济和环境效益产生了重大影响，包括航空航天、汽车、制造业、采矿、生物医学、制药、能源等。这些方面强烈刺激了对PC的研究，该PC具有增强的机械、摩擦学和腐蚀性能，经常与其他功能特性（例如受控的导热性和导电性、低粘附性等）相结合。尽管在PC的制造工艺和材料的发展方面取得了进展，但在该领域的接受和进一步发展经常受到在高温和氧化环境下的稳定性和耐久性不足、PC系统中的高残余应力以及与底层基材的粘附性的限制。此外，涂层系统在特定的、与应用相关的外部条件下失效的详细机制，如在恶劣环境条件下的摩擦机械载荷，还没有得到充分的理解。 为了满足上述薄保护性、功能性和多功能涂层系统领域的重要需求，拟议的研究计划将重点开发一种新型的嵌入式薄膜金属玻璃（TFMG，也称为非晶金属或玻璃状金属）涂层结构。具体地，TFMG具有非晶的玻璃状结构，因此与多晶结构相比，它们不包含引起高耐腐蚀性、抗氧化性和耐磨性的晶界。它们还结合了联合收割机的高强度和高韧性、低摩擦系数、高硬度、低表面能，并且非常光滑。在这种情况下，拟议的计划将推进对PC的研究，同时特别关注以下几个方面：1。使用低压脉冲等离子体工艺（PPP）设计和制造新型TFMG涂层，包括具有同步靶-衬底相互作用的高功率脉冲磁控溅射（HiPIMS）; 2.评估和优化的机械，摩擦学，腐蚀和摩擦腐蚀特性，以及热稳定性的TFMG涂层单独，和3。具有嵌入式TFMG子层的复杂多层硬涂层系统的性能。该研究的主要影响基于以下属性：a）它将有助于详细了解TFMG涂层形成的机制; B）它将有助于解释其特殊的机械和保护性能; c）它将导致摩擦力的显著改善-保护涂层的机械性能和开放的新领域的应用特别感兴趣的加拿大经济。

Progress in protective coatings (PC) presents important challenges and opportunities that significantly impact sustainable development and the economic and environmental benefits in many industrial sectors, including aerospace, automotive, manufacturing, mining, biomedical, pharmaceutical, energy, and others. These aspects have strongly stimulated research on PC with enhanced mechanical, tribological and corrosion properties frequently combined with other functional characteristics such as controlled thermal and electrical conductivities, low sticking and others. Despite the progress in the development of the fabrication processes and materials for PC, the acceptance and further advances in this area are frequently limited by insufficient stability and durability at high temperatures and in oxidative environments, by high residual stresses in the PC systems, and adhesion to the underlying substrate. In addition, the detailed mechanisms of the coatings system failure under specific, application-related external solicitations such as tribolo-mechanical loading under hostile environmental conditions are not sufficiently understood. In response to the important needs in the field of thin protective, functional and multifunctional coating systems described above, the proposed research program will focus on developing a new class of coating architectures with embedded Thin Film Metallic Glasses (TFMG, also called amorphic metals or glassy metals). Specifically, the TFMG possess an amorphous, glass-like structure, hence they contain no grain boundaries giving rise to high corrosion, oxidation, and wear resistance compared to the polycrystalline structures. They also combine high strength and high toughness, low coefficient of friction, high hardness, low surface energy, and are very smooth. In this context, the proposed program will advance research on PC while specifically focusing on the following aspects: 1. Design and fabrication of new and novel TFMG coatings using low pressure, pulsed plasma processes (PPP) including High Power Impulse Magnetron Sputtering (HiPIMS) with synchronized target-substrates interactions; 2. Assessment and optimization of the mechanical, tribological, corrosion and tribo-corrosion characteristics as well as of the thermal stability of the TFMG coatings individually, and 3. Performance of complex multilayer hard coating systems with embedded TFMG sublayers. The main impact of the proposed research is based on the following attributes: a) it will contribute detailed understanding of the mechanisms responsible for the formation of TFMG coatings; b) It will help to explain their exceptional mechanical and protective performance; c) It will lead to significant improvement of the tribo-mechanical performance of protective coatings and open new areas of applications of particular interest of the Canadian economy.