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Taking a Look at Electrophoretic Deposition

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Electrophoretic deposition (EPD) is a combination of electrophoresis and deposition techniques. It is a process where charged powder material is dispersed in a solvent before it is attracted by a direct current (DC) electric field and deposited onto a conductive substrate of opposite charge surface (Besra & Liu, 2007). There are two types of electrophoretic depositions; cathodic electrophoretic deposition and anodic electrophoretic deposition. The former occurs when positively charged particles are deposited at the cathode and vice versa. A schematic diagram of both processes is shown in Figure 1. According to Tassel & Randall (2006), four main characteristics of EPD include: i.) well dispersed particles move independently in a solvent suspension ii.) electrochemical equilibrium with the solvent creates a surface charge on the particles iii.) particles move electrophoretically in the bulk of suspension iv.) a rigid deposition of the particles is produced on the deposition electrode. EPD is used to fabricate ceramic coatings that are wear-resistant and non-oxidant, functional films and develop novel composites especially bio-ceramics to form durable structures for orthopaedic applications via fabrication (Boccaccini et al., 2010). EPD also helps to stabilize nanosized particles in colloidal dispersions onto the surface of an electrode by electrostatic mechanisms (Cao, 2004). Advantages of EPD technique are short formation time, easy to set up, less restriction on the

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