Suspension and solution plasma spraying

Suspension and solution plasma spraying makes it possible to achieve coatings with fine microstructural features and is becoming a common route in laboratories to elaborate coatings a few tenths to a few hundreds of micrometres thick. This paper presents the recent developments in direct current plasma spraying of suspensions or solutions. It begins with a short description of the main plasma torches used for liquid feedstock spraying as well as the techniques used to experimentally observe droplets and particles in the plasma jet and characterize the void network of nanostructured plasma-sprayed coatings. The paper then turns to the momentum and heat transfers between fine particles and the plasma jet and the interactions between the plasma jet and a liquid in the form of a jet or drops. It concludes by linking some characteristic features of coating microstructures with the liquid processing in the plasma jet.