10. Cold spray and non-metallic materials

As mentioned above, since plastic deformation of the deposition material (and to a lesser extent the substrate) is at the root of the cold spray process, the process has been, and still is, primarily concerned with metals. The contents of this article reflect this. Other material classes, led by polymers and ceramics, are not excluded, however. For deposition, they were first considered as filler materials to be mixed with a predominantly metallic phase to produce composites. This does not alter the basic principle of cold spray.

For homogeneous deposition, however, the brittleness of ceramic makes it unsuitable for the fundamental deposition mechanisms of cold spray (§ 5...