A Systematic Investigation of Lead-Free Electroless Ni-B-W Coating Properties Using Taguchi’s Methodology

Electroless Ni-B (ENB) coatings have industrial importance due to their excellent mechanical properties. The inclusion of W (ENB-W) to the coatings further enhances their mechanical properties and thermal stability. Nevertheless, the ENB or ENB-W coatings are deposited from a heavy metal-stabilized bath, and the very commonly used stabilizer is lead nitrate. The present work is an attempt to obtain an ENB-W coating with enhanced mechanical properties and elimination of the stabilizer from the bath. To achieve this, the coating bath temperature, the heat treatment temperature and the heat treatment duration were varied systematically following a strategy adopted from Taguchi’s experimental design. The mechanical properties targeted include surface microhardness and scratch hardness. Multi-objective optimization was performed using gray relational methodology. The predicted bath temperature was 85 °C, while the predicted heat treatment temperature was 450 °C and there was 3 h of heat treatment time. The optimized lead-free ENB-W coatings had a microhardness of 1096.2 HV100 and scratch hardness of 13.86 GPa. In fact, single-objective optimization for surface microhardness and scratch hardness by Taguchi’s methodology also predicted the same optimal parametric condition for both scratch hardness and surface microhardness. This was comparable to that of a lead-stabilized ENB-W coating and higher than the as-plated stabilizer free ENB-W coatings. The coating failure of the optimized ENB-W alloy was tested using a progressive scratch test, which showed that there was no chevron or transverse cracks within the load range considered. Analysis of corrosion resistance revealed that the corrosion potential of the optimized coatings was −407 mV, and this was comparable to that of a lead-based ENB-W coating.