In-situ fabrication of gradient titanium oxide ceramic coating on laser surface textured Ti6Al4V alloy with improved mechanical property and wear performance

In this work, a duplex treatment of laser surface texturing (LST)-thermal oxidation (TO) was conducted on Ti6Al4V alloy to improve its mechanical property and wear performance. Microstructure, bonding strength, microhardness and nanoindentation behavior of the TO-Ti6Al4V were characterized. A comparative appraisal of wear performance for related samples of original Ti6Al4V, LST-Ti6Al4V, TO-Ti6Al4V and duplex treated-Ti6Al4V (DT-Ti6Al4V) were performed under dry sliding condition. The results revealed that gradient titanium oxide coatings with a thickness of 17 mu m were in situ fabricated on the surface of Ti6Al4V and textured Ti6Al4V. The content of O displayed a gradient distribution across the TO-coating. TO treatment has improved the surface hardness and elasticity modulus of the Ti6Al4V. The specific wear rate of the samples was sorted in the following sequence: DT-Ti6Al4V < TO-Ti6Al4V < LST-Ti6Al4V < Ti6Al4V, which indicates that DT-Ti6Al4V exhibited the most excellent wear performance. It was confirmed that Ti6Al4V could obtain promisingly enhanced wear performance by taking advantages of LST and TO treatment.