Supersonic laser spray of aluminium alloy on a ceramic substrate

Abstract Applying a ceramic coating onto a metallic substrate to improve its wear resistance or corrosion resistance has attracted the interest of many researchers during decades. However, only few works explore the possibility to apply a metallic layer onto a ceramic material. This work presents a novel technique to coat ceramic materials with metals: the supersonic laser spraying. In this technique a laser beam is focused on the surface of the precursor metal in such a way that the metal is transformed to the liquid state in the beam–metal interaction zone. A supersonic jet expels the molten material and propels it to the surface of the ceramic substrate. In this study, we present the preliminary results obtained using the supersonic laser spray to coat a commercial cordierite ceramic plate with an Al–Cu alloy using a 3.5 kW CO 2 laser and a supersonic jet of Argon. Coatings were characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and interferometric profilometry.