Improved Pt Aluminide Coatings Using CVD and Novel Platinum Electroplating

Abstract

Chemical vapor deposition (CVD) is an old coating technology, but it was not successfully utilized to aluminize gas turbine hardware until recently (1989). In CVD aluminizing, the use of multiple, independently controlled, low temperature, external, metal halide generators combined with computer control of all process variables gives flexibility and consistent quality that is not possible with any other aluminizing process. It has been shown that harmful coating impurities (such as sulfur and boron etc.) can be transported to a coating from a high temperature aluminum source in the coating chamber during aluminizing. Representative processes include: pack cementation, above the pack, SNECMA, and high activity CVD. In contrast, it has also been demonstrated that CVD low activity aluminizing removes harmful impurities (S, P, B & W etc.) from the coating during deposition. Furthermore, clean, low activity coatings (simple aluminide MDC-210 or platinum modified MDC-150L) have been shown to exhibit superior oxidation resistance compared to similar coatings made by other aluminizing processes. A second significant source of impurities in platinum modified aluminide diffusion coatings is electroplating, that is, plating bath components (S, P, CI, K, Ca etc.) are codeposited with the platinum, and these impurities can have either a beneficial (K&Ca) or a detrimental (S,P&Cl) influence upon the oxidation resistance of the product coating. The results of investigations on the transport of impurities during aluminizing and electroplating, plus the influence of these impurities on oxidation resistance of the product coatings will be presented and discussed.