Properties of Ni-Al2O3 composite coating by laser-assisted pulse electrodeposition

To study the influence of laser process parameters on the surface properties of the coating, Ni-Al2O3 composite coatings on 304 stainless-steel sheets with laser-assisted pulsed electrodeposition was proposed in this paper. Laser single pulse energy and scanning speed were selected as research factors. Single-factor experiments were performed to investigate the effect of various factors on the surface morphology, particle mass fraction, microhardness, surface roughness, and corrosion resistance of the composite coating. The experimental results show that the surface properties of the composite coating first increase and then decrease with increasing laser single pulse energy. When the laser single pulse energy is 11 µJ, the minimum surface roughness value is 0.380 µm with a smooth and uniform coating surface and the best surface morphology. Moreover, as the scanning speed increases, the corrosion resistance of the composite coating initially increases and then decreases. The corrosion resistance of the composite coatings is best with a scanning speed of 1000 mm/s. When the scanning speed was 1500 mm/s, the particle mass fraction in the coating reached a maximum of 1.984%; meanwhile, the highest hardness of the composite coating was obtained with the value of 476.38 HV.