Plasma-based coatings: insights and future
Mindfulness walking around a peaceful place always is a great opportunity to clear thoughts and think about enthralling topics.
In my case some of my enthralling topics are tribology and surface engineering and how such branches of knowledge are impacting manufacturing processes for wellbeing in our society.
Necessarily on top
How are interacting surfaces under loading and moving between them? How much energy is being wasted? How can be increased the lifetime of components? Cardinal questions which encompass the quiddity of tribology and surface engineering where neither easy answer nor unique solution exists. A complex matter which we must face every day until the end of our lives.
Surface engineering involves endless solutions and approaches whereon the imagination ,backed by a strong knowledge foundation, will outline the big picture of possible and cost-effective solutions.
Among the several surface engineering solutions there are the plasma-based coatings. A lot of people have a very clear and intuitive understanding about what a coating is: something which is put on top of a surface to improve its performance. But, what about plasma?
Fourth state of matter
Speaking a “mundane” language, plasma is a kind of gas acting as a source of several species at nanometric level confined and manageable by using electrical and/or magnetic fields which reached that condition by energetics contributions (i.e. controlled electrical discharges) in a proper medium (i.e. vacuum).
From the strictly physics point of view a plasma is a complex matter which is subject of intensive research and from the engineering point view, even though is still being studied, is widespread a well maturate understanding of plasma-related technology thus enabling notorius surfaces enchancement. Although plasma technologies is not an easy-understandable knowledge, nowadays is common to hear in a manufacturing environment the word plasma: cutting by plasma, plasma spray, plasma coating, plasma cleaning, plasma activation, etc.
Plasma and coatings
Coatings produced from an “enhanced” medium as plasma offer a wide spectrum of possibilities to obtain functional surfaces. The very early commercially available plasma-based coatings were produced at the end of 60s by using Plasma-enhanced Chemical Vapour Deposition (PECVD) for a new market on those times: semiconductors. Next commercial-focused leap for plasma-based coatings it was at 80s to fill up the growing market and increased needs of tooling for machining and forming processes where took part the Plasma-assisted Physical Vapour Deposition (PAPVD). Since then these technologies have had a consistent growth into manufacturing industries, having a sharp rate of increasing over the past 20 years. A clear indicator of this trend is the around 10% annual average growth into the market for equipment, products and services related to plasma-based coatings.
Driving forces
Manufacturing processes are becoming more and more complex having to face several types of challenges: rational use of raw material, waste and scrap management, energy efficiency, high levels of process throughput, environmentally friendly, tooling life.
In the case of plasma-based coatings and, specifically, such closer to PVD technologies are those who are being able tick all challenging-boxes above indicated. For those reasons I envisage a continuum and sustained growth of plasma-based technologies during, at least, next 15 years as a key family of technologies for support and improve both already established and emerging manufacturing processes ones.
And having said that, the million-dollar question it would be: where the plasma-based coatings market is moving? The answer: everywhere depending the driven forces involved.
A very personal message as end
Next time when you walk around a peaceful and relaxing place, please, don’t forget following: coatings are improving our lives at astonishing levels. Just think a minute about it and you will notice that.