Electrophoretic deposition of MgO from organic suspensions

MgO is extensively used as a basic refractory material, but in the last decade it has also been considered as a suitable material for technological applications in fields such as catalysis or electronics. Such applications have imposed new requirements regarding the processing techniques. In this way, the electrophoretic deposition (EPD) has been demonstrated to be a useful and simple deposition method among the available coating technologies. A difference with other coating techniques is that the material to be processed by EPD does not require defined properties and hence, there are a wide number of materials that could be coated and deposited by EPD. Major advantages of EPD are versatility, low-cost and reproducibility. The aim of this work was to obtain controlled deposits of MgO onto metallic electrodes by EPD. For this purpose the stability of MgO suspensions in ethanolic media was studied by electrokinetic sonic amplitude (ESA) at different pH conditions. The EPD kinetics was further studied at different electrical conditions. The characteristics of the deposits were studied in relation to the suspension properties and the electrical conditions. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.