Advanced Ceramic Coatings by Aerosol Deposition  

Advanced ceramic coatings are crucial for applications like solid-state batteries, sensors, and bio-implants but face challenges with conventional methods requiring high vacuum, low deposition rates, or high temperatures. Aerosol Deposition (AD) addresses these issues by enabling dense ceramic coatings at room temperature with strong adhesion to various substrates. While widely studied on smooth surfaces, AD on patterned surfaces remains less explored. Our work focuses on fabricating dense ceramic coatings on flat and micro-structured substrates using various powders, highlighting AD’s versatility in tailoring coating thickness, microstructure, and properties for electronics, optics, and energy devices. 

Quasicrystalline materials for erosion resistant coating of rotary blades of helicopters 

Quasicrystalline materials are a type of metallic material with ordered but non-periodic crystalline structure, endowing them low surface energy and high hardness. The rotary blade of helicopters suffered from erosion of sand and water impingement during flight, and the current sacrificial tape method was labor and cost intensive. And the accumulation of ice was detrimental for helicopters working in cold regions like Canada. Applying quasicrystal coating as protective layer may provide with both erosion resistance and icephobicity for the rotary blades.