Repair of damaged surfaces with hard iron-carbon coatings

The ability of levelling an initially irregular surface is investigated for electrochemical deposition of iron-carbon coatings from an electrolyte that does not contain dedicated levelling agents. The environmentally friendly electrolyte with citric acid as carbon source straightforwardly allows the reproducible deposition of coatings with very high microhardness. Successive re-deposition of additional layers is possible without extensive efforts and without compromising the good coating properties. Both the levelling on-its-own and the ability of forming multilayers provide promising prospects for applications where hard surfaces are required or need to be repaired.