The colorful, mechanically tough surfaces of metal supplies are essential for your electronics, automotive, aerospace, etc. purposes, yet difficult to organize at an affordable price. Here, we suggest an easy, environmentally friendly and cost-effective technique, reagent-free hydrothermal remedy, to fix the colorful surfaces of magnesium alloys with mechanical robustness.
The treated soil is mainly composed of (hydr) oxides of magnesium with biomimetic microstructure, whose thickness and roughness improve linearly with hydrothermal time. By adjusting the hydrothermal time, a sequence of magnesium alloy floor colors is obtained due to slight interference.
Floor treated with a film thickness greater than 1.1 μm has an excessive Vickers hardness (~ 500 HV), a low coefficient of friction (~ 0.26) and a low price (1.06 × 10-5 mm- 3 • N-1 • m-1), which is superior to most magnesium alloys after flooring therapies. The microstructure of the soil as it has been treated could be preserved after a rigorous tribological examination, demonstrating an attractive mechanical robustness.
In addition, the tactic proposed here was extended to floor therapies of different sequences of magnesium alloys, verifying the good potential of this technique for large-scale industrial software of colorful metal supplies with mechanical robustness.