WC-Co Composite Coating Deposited by Cold Spraying of a Core-Shell-Structured WC-Co Powder

In this study, a core-shell-structured WC-Co powder was used to develop a heterogeneously structured WC-Co coating with tens micrometers of WC-10Co as strengthening phase and Co-rich WC-Co as the binder in order to realize simultaneous strengthening and toughening. Spray powder particles contain WC-10Co core coated with a Co-rich WC-Co shell by mechanical milling. WC-Co coating with dual-scale strengthening phases was deposited by cold spraying. Post-spray annealing was carried out to further modify the coating microstructure. Microstructures of the spray powder and the coating were characterized by SEM. Mechanical properties of the coating in terms of microhardness and fracture toughness were examined. Results show that a biomodal WC-Co coating with a porosity of only 0.7% was deposited by cold spray. The Co-rich matrix phase contains submicrometer-sized carbide and primary hard phase is WC-10Co particles. The measurement yielded a Vickers microhardness of 1493 ± 76.7 HV_0.1 for WC-10Co core and 693 ± 47.3 HV_0.1 for Co-rich binder phase. After annealed at 900 °C for 5 h, a remarkable increase in fracture toughness from 21.2 ± 3.8 to 35.7±5.2 MPa m^−0.5 was achieved while no evident change occurred to the hardness of WC-10Co cores.