Wear-Resistant Low-friction Atmospheric Pressure Plasma Spray Coatings for Sustainable (Bio-based Recyclable) Materials

Coatings from polyetheretherketone (PEEK), polyamide 12 (PA12), molybdenumdisulfide (MoS2), zinc (Zn), and graphite (C) powder mixtures were deposited on PA6, PA12, and PEEK substrates by an atmospheric pressure plasma (APP) spray jet system. Several tenth of µm thick coatings on PA6 and PA12 substrates result in an almost halved surface roughness Ra ~8 µm, Rq ~10 µm and Rz ~60 µm, whereas a significant increase of all surface roughness parameters is observed for PEEK substrates (Ra < 1 µm → 4 µm, Rq < 1 µm → 5 µm, Rz < 5 µm → 20 µm). The surface roughness, powder composition, and selected APP process parameter strongly influence the coefficient of friction (COF) and specific wear rate ki of the APP coatings in rotational ball-on-disc tribological testing. The COF of PA12/MoS2/C coatings on PA6 substrates manufactured by selective laser sintering (SLS) is ~0.2 after 628 m sliding distance, resulting in a very low calculated ki of 6.3 × 10−7 mm3/Nm. A similarly low COF and ki was observed for PEEK coatings deposited at a current of 75 A and 60 mm jet–substrate distance on SLS PA12 substrate. Although the COF of Zn/C/MoS2 coatings on PEEK drops down below 0.1 after 1884 m sliding distance under nitrogen atmosphere the corresponding ki of 5.6 × 10−5 mm3/Nm is higher. Still all calculated specific wear rates are significantly lower than the reported values of polyamide-polytetrafluorethylene (PTFE)-polyethylene composites (1.9–8.0 × 10−2 mm3/Nm) and partly even outperform PEEK-PTFE composites (1.0 × 10−7–2.5 × 10−6), currently applied in demanding wear regimes.