Powder Aerosol Deposition and Polymers: Is There Hope for a Common Future?

Abstract

Polymer–ceramic composites (PCCs) are promising functional materials with applications in energy technology, microelectronics, sensor technology, protective coatings, wastewater treatment or for biomedical purposes. Unfortunately, ceramics require high-temperature sintering, while polymers only have a limited thermal stability. Therefore, PCC fabrication is quite complex and requires strict process control. This severely limits the efficiency and economy of the process and the reproducibility of the desired materials properties. Powder aerosol deposition (PAD) is a spray-coating process in which ceramic powders are accelerated by a pressure difference using a carrier gas. They are then deposited as nanocrystalline, dense coatings onto a substrate without the need for additional sintering. In the current PAD research, the focus is ceramic powders. Yet there are also examples of polymer and ceramic particles that have been codeposited. Much of this works is trial-and-error, and a general concept for deposition of PCCs by PAD is not yet available. This review revisits the fundamentals of PAD and the most important process parameters that were studied experimentally and in silico. It connects these with recent work on the combination of polymers and ceramics in the PAD process to highlight and evaluate the future of this field from a polymer science perspective.