Self-lubricated coatings have been a major topic of interest in thermal spray in the last decades. Although the use of liquid lubricants is desirable whenever it is possible, limited research has been addressed towards the development of self-lubricated coatings containing liquid lubricants. One of the main reasons for this is due to the complexity of embedding liquid lubricant reservoirs inside the coating matrix. The production of thermal spray coatings containing liquid lubricants was first successfully achieved in 2011. The first liquid-solid self-lubricated thermal spray coating consisted of lubricant filled capsules inside a polymeric matrix. The goal of this family of coatings is to release lubricant to the system when needed. One of the challenges in producing these coatings is to prevent the degradation of the capsules containing the liquid lubricant during spraying. In the present work, a new type of liquid-solid self-lubricated coatings is presented, being the matrix a metal alloy and the thermal spray technique used arc-spray. Two metal alloys were used as matrix material, an iron-based and a zinc-based. No degradation of the capsules during spraying was observed and the coatings containing capsules were able to keep a low coefficient of friction.
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