The colorful and mechanically robust surfaces of metallic materials are important for their applications of electronics, automobile, aerospace and so on, but it is challenging to prepare them at reasonable… Click to show full abstract
The colorful and mechanically robust surfaces of metallic materials are important for their applications of electronics, automobile, aerospace and so on, but it is challenging to prepare them at reasonable cost. Herein, we propose a simple, environment-friendly and cost-effective method, reagent-free hydrothermal treatment, to prepare the colorful surfaces of magnesium alloys with mechanical robustness. The as-treated surface mainly composes of magnesium (hydr)oxides with biomimetic microstructure, whose thickness and roughness increase linearly with the hydrothermal time. By adjusting the hydrothermal time, a series of surface colors of magnesium alloys are obtained due to light interference. The as-treated surface with film thickness more than 1.1 μm exhibits high Vickers hardness (~500 HV), low friction coefficient (~0.26) and low wear rate (1.06×10-5 mm-3•N-1•m-1), which is superior to most magnesium alloys after surface treatments. The microstructure of the as-treated surface can be retained after harsh tribological test, demonstrating attractive mechanical robustness. Furthermore, the method proposed here was extended to the surface treatments of other series of magnesium alloys, which verifies the great potential of this method for large-scale industrial application of colorful metallic materials with mechanical robustness.
               
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