Phase constituents and microstructure of laser synthesized TiB2–TiC reinforced composite coating on steel

The synthesis of hard composite coating reinforced with TiB2–TiC on steel using laser surface engineering has been investigated. Phase evolution was analyzed by correlating the experimental results with thermodynamic calculation performed by ThermalcalcTM software. The composite coating consists of α-Fe, γ-(Fe,Ni), TiB2, TiC and Fe3(B,C). Microstructure characterization reveals micro-sized blocky particles and submicron-sized spherical particles. Compared with the steel substrate, an improvement of microhardness value (3–4 times) was observed for the composite coating.