Thermal Barrier Coatings Performed by Suspension Plasma Spraying—Development and Characterization

Abstract Over many years, the aeronautic industry has been involved in Thermal Barrier Coatings (TBCs) development to increase the performances of the hot section components of aero engines like turbine blades or nozzle guide vanes. The Electron Beam Physical Vapor Deposition (EB-PVD) process has been widely used for high performances TBC’s on metallic substrate mainly due to enhanced life time performances. Nevertheless, the cost, a rather high thermal conductivity and a poor resistance against chemicals aggressions of TBCs performed by EB-PVD are real drawbacks for the next generation of turbine engines. For this purpose, Suspension Plasma Spraying (SPS) has been employed in this study for TBC. It is showed that SPS process allows to performing columnar microstructure easily tunable in terms of: size, distribution and morphology.