Image copyright: Milan Ivosevic

• A "family" of industrial coating technologies...used to modify the surface of materials to make them more wear, corrosion or thermally resistant...Surface Modification technologies.

• An ~ $2 billion/year "enabling" technology.

• Used in aerospace/aircraft, defense, petrochemical, automotive, electronic, pulp & paper, mining, agricultural, chemical and food processing, repair and other industries.

• Thermal spray uses powder, wire or rod starting materials to form new surfaces.

• The fourth state of matter...solid --> liquid --> gas --> plasma.

• Used in wide range of applications:
  - semiconductors manufacture.
  - steel making and extractive metallurgy.
  - cutting & welding, lighting and waste destruction.
  - analysis of materials.

• There are also different kind of plasmas:
  - "cold" plasmas...driven by glow discharges, and used in things like fluorescent tubes and lasers.
  - "hot" plasmas...used by physicists in nuclear fusion research.
  - "thermal" plasmas, as used by the CPPM for R&D in thermal spray, plasma treatment and plasma-chemical synthesis of materials.

Back to top