Cold spray (CS) is a rapid additive manufacturing method for deposition of metallic materials at rates significantly exceeding the laser-based methods, while retaining high deposit quality and low process cost. The mechanisms of the high-rate, extensive deformation of the materials in the CS process were recently intensively studied on macro- and meso-levels. In this paper, we introduce positron annihilation spectroscopy as a viable and reliable analytical method to study lattice defects created in the cold sprayed materials on the atomic-scale level. For the first demonstration, four different base metals were selected (Al, Cu, Ni, and Ti). A high density of dislocations was observed in all four deposits. In addition, deposits of fcc metals (Al, Cu, and Ni) also contain a considerable concentration of vacancy clusters. The results show that the extremely fast deformation in cold spray deposition process prevents recovery of vacancies which tend to agglomerate into clusters.

冷喷涂 (CS) 是一种快速增材制造方法，用于沉积金属材料，其速率明显超过基于激光的方法，同时保持较高的沉积质量和较低的工艺成本。最近，人们在宏观和细观层面上深入研究了CS过程中材料高速、广泛变形的机制。在本文中，我们介绍了正电子湮没光谱作为一种可行且可靠的分析方法，用于在原子尺度水平上研究冷喷涂材料中产生的晶格缺陷。对于第一次演示，选择了四种不同的贱金属（Al、Cu、Ni 和 Ti）。在所有四个沉积物中都观察到高密度的位错。此外，面心立方金属（Al、Cu 和 Ni）沉积物还含有相当浓度的空位簇。结果表明，冷喷涂沉积过程中极快的变形阻止了空位的恢复，而空位往往会聚集成簇。