Light weight metals are key materials in advanced manufacturing including aerospace, automobile, and etc. Surface coating is a general strategy to improve the durability of such metals, and plasma electrolytic oxidation (PEO) is a versatile coating technology to form a protection coating on them.

Here, we present a one-step process to form a carbon nanotubes (CNT)-incorporated ceramic coating on Al based on PEO technology. The coating can provide protection for the light weight metals against both chemical corrosion and mechanical wear. Coatings w/o and with CNT additives are compared. Our results pave a way toward multi-functional protection coating for light weight metals.