A Novel Catalytic Ceramic Conversion Treatment of Zr702 to Combat Wear

Zr and its alloys are widely used in multiple areas, including the nuclear and medical fields. Previous studies indicate that a ceramic conversion treatment (C2T) of Zr-based alloys can address the issues of low hardness, high friction, and poor wear resistance of Zr based alloys. This paper introduced a novel catalytic ceramic conversion treatment (C3T) to Zr702 by pre-depositing a catalytic film (such as silver, gold, platinum, etc.) before the ceramic conversion treatment, which efficiently promoted the C2T process, in terms of reduced treatment times, with a thick, good quality, surface ceramic layer. The formed ceramic layer significantly improved the surface hardness and tribological properties of Zr702 alloy. Compared with conventional C2T, the C3T technique provided two orders of magnitude reduction of wear factor and reduced the coefficient of friction from 0.65 to <0.25. Among the C3T samples, the C3TAg and the C3TAu samples have the highest wear resistance and lowest CoF, mainly due to the self-lubricant formation during the wear processes.