Characterization of carbon fabric coated with Ni-P and Ni-P-ZrO2-Al2O3 by electroless technique

Ni-P and Ni-P-ZrO2-Al2O3 (Ni-P-X) composite coatings on carbon fiber woven fabric have been attempted by electroless (EL) coating technique. For producing Ni-P EL coating, a sodium hypophosphite is used as reducing agent in alkaline bath whereas for producing composite coating, in the same bath, the co-precipitation of Al2O3 along with ZrO2 by a chemical reaction has been used. The bath used was maintained at pH value of 9 ± 0.25 and a temperature of 90 ± 2°C for all the coatings under investigation. The morphology of coatings has been studied under SEM and the phases have been identified by XRD and TEM. The phases like microcrystalline nickel, amorphous nickel, Ni5P4 and Ni12P5 have been identified to be present. The grain size of these phases has been seen to be in the range of 5–10 nm. The tensile strength of as-coated and heat treated samples of both the types of coatings have been compared with that of uncoated fabric. The UTS values of uncoated carbon fabric used has been found to 3.7 N/mm2 whereas that for heat treated after coating the fabric samples with Ni-P and Ni-P-ZrO2-Al2O3 EL coatings have been observed to be 11.1 and 12.4 N/mm2 respectively.