Cold Spray Deposition of MoS2- and WS2-Based Solid Lubricant Coatings

The cold spray deposition technique has been used to produce a new class of solid lubricant coatings using powder feedstocks of the metal disulfides WS2 or MoS2, either pure or mixed with Cu and Ni metal powders. Friction and cycle lives were obtained using ball-on-flat reciprocating tribometry of coated 304 SS flats in dry nitrogen and vacuum at higher Hertzian contact stresses (Smax = 1386 MPa (201 ksi)). The measured friction and thickness of the coatings were much lower than for previous studies (COF = 0.03 ± 0.01 and ≤1 µm, respectively), which is due to their high metal disulfide:metal ratios. Cu-containing metal sulfide coatings exhibited somewhat higher cycle lifetimes than the pure metal sulfide coatings, even though the Cu content was only ~1 wt%. Profiling of wear tracks for coatings tested to 3000 cycles (i.e., pre-failure) yielded specific wear rates in the range 3–7 × 10−6 mm3N−1m−1, similar to other solid lubricant coatings. When compared to other coating techniques, the cold spray method represents a niche that has heretofore been vacant. In particular, it will be useful in many precision ball-bearing applications that require higher throughput and lower costs than sputter-deposited MoS2-based coatings.