Controllable in situ fabrication of self-lubricating nanocomposite coating for light alloys

Intrinsic friction and corrosion issues of light alloys impede their application in tribological and corrosive environments, thus a proper ceramic coating is normally required to overcome these issues for practical engineering deployment. Here, we developed a new approach to fabricate controllable and self-lubricating nanocomposite coating by combining in-situ synthesis of MoS2 and plasma electrolytic oxidation (PEO) process. It is found that the coefficient of friction of this new coating is only about a quarter of the coatings obtained by traditional PEO process due to the self-lubricating characteristic of gradient MoS2. More importantly, this ceramic coating exhibits excellent interfacial strengthen through edge-pinning by noncoherent, which endows excellent tribological and adhesive properties. This facile technique provides a new strategy to fabricate self-lubricating ceramic coating for light alloys, and is believed to have great potential applications in wide engineering sectors and open new avenues for designing novel alloy systems for extreme conditions.