Influence of Plasma Spraying on the Performance of Oxide Cathodes

This paper investigates the plasma-spraying technique as applied to oxide cathodes compared with the conventional coating method. In the conventional oxide cathode manufacturing process, a carbonate powder layer BaSrCa(CO₃) is either painted or sprayed onto the nickel-base material at room temperature after the carbonate powder has been mixed with a nitrocellulose binder to provide adhesion to the nickel surface. However, the by-products deposited due to the coating of the oxide cathode and the decomposing process, combined with the relatively weak adhesion resulting from this coating method, undermine the performance of the oxide cathode. Plasma spraying can produce a high-quality coating by applying a relatively inert medium using a high-temperature high-particle velocity process. Impacts on the performance of the plasma-sprayed oxide cathode, as compared with a conventionally coated oxide cathode, are presented. The experimental results show that the pulsed-current emission density of a plasma-sprayed oxide cathode is nearly twice that of the conventionally coated oxide cathode, whereas the evaporation rate of the plasma-sprayed oxide cathode is only 10% as much as the conventionally coated oxide cathode.