A bulk-type Ta material is fabricated using the kinetic spray process and its microstructure and physical properties are investigated. Ta powder with an angular size in the range 9-37 μm (purity 99.95%) is sprayed on a Cu plate to form a coating layer. As a result, ~7 mm-sized bulk-type high-density material capable of being used as a sputter material is fabricated. In order to assess the physical properties of the thick coating layer at different locations, the coating material is observed at three different locations (surface, center, and interface). Furthermore, a vacuum heat treatment is applied to the coating material to reduce the variation of physical properties at different locations of the coating material and improve the density. OM, Vickers hardness test, SEM, XRD, and EBSD are implemented for analyzing the microstructure and physical properties. The fabricated Ta coating material produces porosity of 0.11~0.12%, hardness of 311~327 Hv, and minor variations at different locations. In addition, a decrease in the porosity and hardness is observed at different locations upon heat treatment.

This study is a basic research for repair material production which manufactured a Cu repair coating layer on the base material of a Cu plate using kinetic spray process. Furthermore, the manufactured material underwent an annealing heat treatment, and the changes of microstructure and macroscopic properties in the Cu repair coating layer and base material were examined. The powder feedstocks were sphere-shaped pure Cu powders with an average size of 27.7μm. The produced repair coating material featured 600μm thickness and 0.8% porosity, and it had an identical α-Cu single phase as the early powder. The produced Cu repair coating material and base material displayed extremely high adhesion characteristics that produced a boundary difficult to identify. Composition analysis confirmed that the impurities in the base material and repair coating material had no significant differences. Microstructure observation after a 500℃/1hr. heat treatment (vacuum condition) identified recovery, recrystallization and grain growth in the repair coating material and featured a more homogeneous microstructure. The hardness difference (δHv) between the repair coating material and base material significantly reduced from 87 to 34 after undergoing heat treatment.

Vacuum kinetic spray(VKS) is a relatively advanced process for fabricating thin/thick and dense ceramic coatings via submicron-sized particle impact at room temperature. However, unfortunately, the particle velocity, which is an important value for investigating the deposition mechanism, has not been clarified yet. Thus, in this research, VKS average particle velocities were derived by numerical analysis method(CFD: computational fluid dynamics) connected with an experimental approach(SCM: slit cell method). When the process gas or powder particles are accelerated by a compressive force generated by gas pressure in kinetic spraying, a tensile force generated by the vacuum in the VKS system accelerates the process gas. As a result, the gas is able to reach supersonic speed even though only 0.6MPa gas pressure is used in VKS. In addition, small size powders can be accelerated up to supersonic velocity by means of the drag-force of the low pressure process gas flow. Furthermore, in this process, the increase of gas flow makes the drag-force stronger and gas distribution more homogenized in the pipe, by which the total particle average velocity becomes higher and the difference between max. and min. particle velocity decreases. Consequently, the control of particle size and gas flow rate are important factors in making the velocity of particles high enough for successful deposition in the VKS system.