Effect of substrate materials on rutile crystalline orientation in plasma-sprayed TiO₂ coatings

TiO_x coatings are of technical importance owing to their promising applications to photocatalytical, electrical, optical and tribological coatings. Thermal spraying process has been widely used to deposit both metallic and nonmetallic coatings. During thermal spraying, spray particle at fully or partially melted condition is projected to a substrate and subsequently flattens, rapidly cools and solidifies. Therefore, a coating in lamellar structure is usually formed as a quenched microstructure. TiO₂ coatings were deposited on different substrates through plasma spraying with fused-crushed powder in rutile phase as feedstock to reveal the crystalline orientation in the coatings. XRD results show that the coatings consist of rutile phase with a fraction of anatase phase, and the rutile phase presents a preferable crystalline orientation along [101] direction. It is found that the orientation factors of rutile phase in the thin coatings are significantly influenced by substrate materials. The thick coatings yield the same orientation factors of 0.22 to 0.23 on all substrates in spite of substrate materials. It is considered that the thermal properties of substrate materials are the dominant factors for the preferable crystalline orientation in rutile phase within plasma-sprayed TiO₂ coating.