With the rapid development of modern industries, the surface quality and performance of metals need to be improved. Composite electrodeposition (co-deposition) has evolved as an important technique for improving the surface performance of metal materials. Herein, a new type of graphene oxide (GO)-reinforced nickel–boron (Ni-B) composite coating was successfully prepared on a 7075 aluminum (Al) alloy by co-deposition. Characterization revealed a significant improvement in the mechanical and anti-corrosion properties of the composite with the incorporation of GOs. The composite showed a rougher, compact, cauliflower-like morphology with finer grains, a higher hardness (1532 HV), a lower rate of wear (5.20 × 10⁻⁵ mm³∙N⁻¹∙m⁻¹), and a lower corrosion rate (33.66 × 10⁻³ mm∙y⁻¹) compared with the Ni-B alloy deposit (878 HV, 9.64 × 10⁻⁵ mm³∙N⁻¹∙m⁻¹, and 116.64 × 10⁻³ mm∙y⁻¹, respectively). The mechanism by which GOs strengthen the Ni-B matrix is discussed.

The powder metallurgy process of the Al–graphene system is conducted by molecular dynamics (MD) simulations to investigate the role of graphene. During the sintering process, graphene is considered to reduce the pore size and metal grain size based on the volume change and atomic configuration of the Al parts in the composite. Compared with the pure Al system, the space occupied by the same number of Al atoms in the sintered composite is 15–20 nm³ smaller, and the sintered composite has about 5000 fewer arranged atoms. Because these models are carefully designed to avoid a serious deformation of graphene in the tension of sandwich-like composite models, the strengthening mechanism close to the experimental theory where graphene just serves to transfer a load can be studied dynamically. The boundary comprising of two phases is confirmed to hinder the motion of dislocations, while the crack grows along the interface beside graphene, forming a fracture surface of orderly arranged Al atoms. The results indicate that single-layer graphene (SLG) gives rise to an increase of 1.2 or 0.4 GPa in tensile strength when stretched in in-plane or normal direction, while bilayer graphene (BLG) brings a clear rise of 1.2–1.3 GPa in both directions. In both in-plane and normal stretching directions, the mechanical properties of the composite can be improved clearly by graphene giving rise to a strong boundary, new crack path, and more dense structure.

Direct effect of graphene on mechanical property of Al matrix composite has been studied by using molecular dynamic (MD) methods. The models of graphene-reinforced composite are achieved by modeling the sintering system consisting of Al particles and graphene nanosheets (GNSs), while pure Al models are obtained by deleting graphene in the composites. Structural analysis on composites indicate the increment of GNSs can promote the densification of metal matrix, increase the porosity in composite, and restrict the metal grain size. Such analysis is also performed on pure Al models, and the similarity in structure between pure Al and composite models is confirmed by the tiny difference in the nanopores, atomic images, and the number of ordered atoms. Tensile processes on the similar structures with or without graphene reveal that the direct effect of graphene shows an obvious anisotropy, low graphene content may weaken the composite in some directions, while high graphene content can strengthen the composite in more directions. However, the highest content of GNSs just brings a slight increase of 2.7% in tensile strength. The atomic images of crack propagation and the atomic stress confirm that graphene is not efficient in load transfer. Therefore, the direct effect of graphene is believed to play a very small role in strengthening mechanisms.

In this work, we studied the effects of different reinforcements on a metal matrix composite (MMC) using molecular dynamics (MD) simulations, where graphene was chosen as the two-dimensional (2D) material and diamond was selected as the three-dimensional (3D) material. Sintering and tensile processes were conducted on the MMC models containing reinforcements of various sizes, and the effects of reinforcements with the same surface area were compared. The results indicated that the 2D material was more beneficial for sintering at the heating stage, producing a higher-density structure. The volume of Al atoms fell from 752 to 736 nm³ as the graphene size in the composite system increased. However, a slight increase from 749 to 755 nm³ was observed when the diamond radius was small. Converted to relevant metrics in the experiments, the density of the composite reached 2.84 g/cc with a 3.3 wt.% addition of single-layer graphene (SLG) and 2.87 g/cc with a 15.4 wt.% addition of diamond, and the results were slightly higher than the experimental reports. Both SLG and diamond could reduce the number of arranged Al atoms from 43,550 to approximately 35,000, and bilayer graphene (BLG) with the largest size could further decrease the number of arranged atoms to nearly 30,000, implying that grain refinement could be obtained by increasing the surface area of reinforcements. Considering the scale of these models, the reinforcement size and pore location in the initial structures were deemed to have an impact on the mechanical properties. The composite with the largest proportion of SLG showed an increase of more than 1.6 GPa in tensile strength; however, BLG showed a significant drop of 1.9 GPa when stretched in the normal direction, as the large interlayer space acted as a large hole in tension. The diamond size did not appear to affect the strengthening effects. Nevertheless, the elongation values of composites with graphene were generally 35% higher than the Al-diamond composites.

The process parameters of electrodeposited Ni–Fe–graphene composite coating on the 7075 aluminum alloy were optimized by the orthogonal experiment. The optimized process parameters were determined as follows: graphene concentration of 1 g L⁻¹, current density of 9 A dm⁻², agitation speed of 250 r min⁻¹, and temperature of 60 °C, on the basis of hardness and friction coefficient. The Ni–Fe–graphene composite coating shows an increment of 393.0% in hardness and a decrement of 55.9% in friction coefficient in comparison with 7075 aluminum alloy substrate. The Ni–Fe–graphene composite coating binds tightly to 7075 aluminum alloy with adhesion strength of higher than 6.895 MPa. These make contributions to provide effective protection for aluminum alloys. Surface morphology and corrosion morphology, as well as morphology of the side bound to the substrate, were characterized. The scattered asperities on the surface were proven to be graphene nanoplatelets being wrapped by Ni–Fe, which comprehensively reveals the formation of asperities.

Diamond-like carbon (DLC) has attracted much attention due to its unique properties such as high chemical inertness, optical transparency, and high biocompatibility. In this study, the total gas flow rate was kept constant, while the ratio of reactive gases was varied to deposit nitrogen-doped diamond-like carbon thin films on glass substrates using radiofrequency plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition. The effects of the gas flow ratio on the composition, microstructure, surface morphology, and optical properties of the thin films were investigated through extended deposition times. It was found that with an increase in the nitrogen-to-methane gas flow ratio, the film surface became smoother and more compact. The maximum transmittance in the visible range reached 90%, and the highest and lowest transmittance in the same ultraviolet wavelength region differed by up to 25.62% among several sample groups. The optical bandgap decreased from 3.58 eV to 3.46 eV, contrary to the trend of the sp² fraction variation. Compared with other studies, this study considered the preparation of nitrogen-doped diamondoids using a chemical vapor deposition method with a lesser total gas flow rate passed into it, which provides practical data reference value for the preparation of N-DLC.