Deposition of cubic tungsten carbide coating on metal substrates at sputtering of electric discharge plasma

Abstract

Hexagonal modifications of tungsten carbide are widely used in various metalworking products and tools. However, the cubic tungsten carbide phase is still poorly understood due to significant difficulties in its synthesis, both in the form of powdered products, and in bulk form. This leads to the impossibility of conducting direct studies of its physical and mechanical properties. This paper shows the opportunity to obtain bulk coatings with a thickness of up to 70 µm, mainly consisting of cubic tungsten carbide using the plasma-dynamic method. The coating formation occurs when spraying the electric discharge tungsten-carbon containing plasma on a metal substrate made of a titanium and aluminum alloy due to the high rate of sputtering and crystallization. This allows synthesizing a stable coating adherent to the substrate based on cubic tungsten carbide with a purity of its yield of at least 85 wt.%.