The wear, corrosion and antibacterial behaviors of FeCrNiCuAlx high-entropy alloy coatings prepared by laser cladding for marine applications
Shixu Han, Heng Ma, Hao Chen, Wenqi Zou, Cuidi Mo, Zhengping Fan, Leigang Li, Hongzhi Cui
Abstract
The rapid development of marine equipment demands surface treatments to improve the comprehensive performance of the key components. High-entropy alloys (HEAs) are one of the promising materials for high-performance multifunctional coatings.In this work, FeCrNiCuAl x (x = 0, 0.4, 0.8 and 1.2) HEA coatings are prepared on 304 stainless steel by laser cladding. The phase constituents vary obviously with the aluminum content, changing from single face-centered cubic to single body-centered cubic, which is a dominant factor of increasing hardness and wear resistance. However, regarding corrosion resistance, it initially increases and then decreases and FeCrNiCuAl 0.4 displays the highest corrosion resistance with the smallest corrosion current density of 0.27 μA/cm 2 . Furthermore, copper is uniformly distributed as nano precipitates showing interwoven structures in FeCrNiCuAl 1.2 and it possesses the highest antibacterial rate of 93.25% and the thinnest biofilm of 15.34 ± 1.15 μm against Pseudomonas aeruginosa , because of the durable releasing of copper ions to effectively inhibit the formation of bacterial biofilms. This work provides insights into the design and fabrication of structure-function integrated HEA coatings for marine applications.