Polymers and polymer composites have been increasingly used due to their low density and high specific strength; however, their low electrical conductivity has limited their further application. Cold spray has recently been proven to be a feasible approach to metallize polymers. Previous results have shown that tin can be cold sprayed onto polymeric substrates when spraying with a low-pressure cold spray system at gas temperatures close to the melting point of tin. The successful deposition of tin was partly attributed to the tin reaching its incipient melting point. In this work, three low melting point metal powders, namely, Sn, Sn-Zn alloy, and Sn-Bi alloy, were cold sprayed onto five widely used engineering polymers. Different combinations of gas temperature and gas pressure were assessed. Results show that decreasing the melting points of the feedstock powders can improve their deposition efficiency on polymeric substrates, due to a higher degree of particle melting. Among the five polymers, the high-toughness ultra high molecular weight polyethylene and polycarbonate were relatively difficult to metallize.

聚合物和聚合物复合材料由于其低密度和高比强度而得到越来越多的使用。然而，它们的低电导率限制了它们的进一步应用。最近已经证明，冷喷涂是使聚合物金属化的可行方法。先前的结果表明，在气体温度接近锡的熔点的情况下，用低压冷喷涂系统喷涂锡时，可以将锡冷喷涂到聚合物基材上。锡的成功沉积部分归因于锡达到其初始熔点。在这项工作中，将三种低熔点金属粉末，即Sn，Sn-Zn合金和Sn-Bi合金冷喷涂到五种广泛使用的工程聚合物上。评估了气体温度和气压的不同组合。结果表明，由于较高的颗粒熔化度，降低原料粉末的熔点可以提高其在聚合物基材上的沉积效率。在这五种聚合物中，高韧性超高分子量聚乙烯和聚碳酸酯很难金属化。