Epitaxial grain growth during splat cooling of alumina droplets produced by atmospheric plasma spraying

Alumina splats were deposited on polished single crystal alumina substrates with two different crystalline facet orientations of [001] and [110] by atmospheric plasma spraying at a substrate preheating temperature of 900 C to examine the epitaxy during splat cooling. The cross-sectional samples for high-resolution transmission electron microscopy examination were prepared by focused ion beam-assisted-scanning electron microscopy (FIB-SEM). The results show that the whole splats with a thickness ranging from ∼600 to ∼1000 nm exhibit the same crystalline structure as the substrate. Moreover, the splat deposited on the single crystalline alumina substrates exhibits exactly the same orientation as the substrate. The results evidently indicate that the epitaxial grain growth occurs after alumina droplets impact on the single crystal alumina substrate. The present results suggest that the crystalline structure of alumina deposit formed by plasma spraying can be possibly controlled by the coating surface temperature.