Prospects of Low-Pressure Cold Spray for Superhydrophobic Coatings

A Selective Review of Ceramic, Glass and Glass-Ceramic Protective Coatings: General Properties and Specific Characteristics for Solar Cell Applications

A review on ceramics, glasses and glass-ceramics as thin film protective coatings for solar cells is given. The different preparation techniques and the physical and chemical properties are presented in a comparative way. This study is useful for technologies involving solar cells and solar panel cell development at the industrial scale, because protective coatings and encapsulation play a major role in increasing the lifetime of solar panels and environmental protection. The aim of this review article is to give a summary of existing ceramic, glass, and glass-ceramic protective coatings and how they apply to solar cell technology: silicon, organic or perovskite cells. Moreover, some of these ceramic, glass or glass-ceramic layers were found to have dual functionality, such as providing anti-reflectivity or scratch resistance to give a two-fold improvement to the lifetime and efficiency of the solar cell.

Advanced Functional Metal-Ceramic and Ceramic Coatings Deposited by Low-Pressure Cold Spraying: A Review

Based on the recent analysis of various databases, cold spray (CS), the newest method among thermal spraying technologies, has received the unabated attention of hundreds of researchers continuously since its invention in the 1980s. The significance of CS lies in the low process temperature, which usually ensures compressive residual stresses and allows for the formation of coatings on a thermally sensitive substrate. This paper concerns the low-pressure cold spray (LPCS) variant employed for forming metal matrix composites (MMCs) with high ceramic contents and all-ceramic coatings. At the very beginning, the influence of LPCS process parameters on deposition efficiency (DE) is analysed. In the next part, the most useful feedstock powder preparation techniques for LCPS are presented. Due to the combination of bottom-up powder production methods (e.g., sol-gel (SG)) with LCPS, the metal matrix that works as a binder for ceramic particles in MMC coatings can be removed, resulting in all-ceramic coatings. Furthermore, with optimization of spraying parameters, it is possible to predict and control phase transformation in the feedstock material. Further in the paper, differences in the bonding mechanism of metal–ceramic mixtures and ceramic particles are presented. The properties and applications of various MMC and ceramic coatings are also discussed. Finally, the exemplary direction of CS development is suggested.