Effect of Electrodeposition Method on Ni/SiC Composite Coating

Abstract The work attempts to find out the effects of current parameters on particle codeposition and microhardness of composite coatings. Also, it uses pulse reverse current in increasing nanoparticle content and microhardness. Two different coating layers, Ni and Ni/SiC, were electroplated on brass substrate using four different electroplating parameters. However, a group of the parameters have failed to produce successful coating. After plating, the origin samples are cut into small pieces to test different characteristics. The small samples from corner of the origin one were mounted and taken thickness measurements. The samples from center were taken to measure microhardness and content of nanoparticles. To find out reason of failed samples, a Pourbaix diagram was calculated afterward. The average content of SiC nanoparticles of each sample doesn’t have much differences but the samples using pulse reverse current have a uniform distribution. A higher microhardness is achieved by pulse current. Keywords Composite electroplating, Ni/SiC, Content of nanoparticle, Microhardnes