Hindawi Publishing Corporation Advances in Tribology Volume 2013, Article ID 315965, 10 pages http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2013/315965 Research Article Effect of Nanoadditives with Surfactant on the Surface Characteristics of Electroless Nickel Coating on Magnesium-Based Composites Reinforced with MWCNT Ranganathan Dhinakaran, Rasu Elansezhian, and Arunachalam Arumugam Lalitha Department of Mechanical Engineering, Pondicherry Engineering College, Pondicherry 605014, India Correspondence should be addressed to Rasu Elansezhian; elansezhianr@pec.edu Received 6 June 2013; Revised 23 October 2013; Accepted 20 November 2013 Academic Editor: S. Aravindan Copyright © 2013 Ranganathan Dhinakaran et al. is is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. An experimental investigation has been carried out on optimizing process parameters of electroless nickel-phosphorous coatings on magnesium composite reinforced with carbon nanotube. A comprehensive experimental study of electroless Ni–P coatings on magnesium composite reinforced with multiwalled carbon nanotube under specific coating conditions was performed. e electroless coating bath consists of nickel sulphate (26 g/L), sodium hypo-phosphite (30 g/L) as reducing agent, sodium acetate (16g/L) as stabilizer, and ammonium hydrogen difluoride (8g/L) as the complexing agent. e surfactant SLS was added in the solution for better wetting and spreading of coating on substrate. e stabilizer thiourea (1 ppm) was added in the bath to prevent decomposition of bath. Different nanoadditives such as ZnO, Al 2 O 3 , SiO with various concentrations were used in the bath and their influence on coating process characteristics were studied e nano additives such as ZnO, Al 2 O 3 , SiO were added at concentrations of 0.1%, 0.5%, 1%, and 2% in the EN bath. e output parameters such as surface roughness, microhardness, specific wear rate, and surface morphology were measured. Surface morphology was studied using scanning electron microscope. e results showed that the proposed method resulted in significant improvement on the quality of the coatings produced. 1. Introduction Electroless nickel coating has received widespread acceptance as it provides a uniform deposit on irregular surfaces, direct deposition on surface-activated nonconductors, formation of less porous deposits, and high hardness and excellent resistance to wear, abrasion, and corrosion [1, 2]. All smooth surfaces possess some degree of roughness, even if only at the atomic level. Correct function of the fabricated component oſten is critically dependent on its degree of roughness. Every machining operation bequeaths some characteristic on the machined surface. is characteristic microirregularities leſt by the cutting tool are termed as surface irregularity or sur- face roughness [3]. Roughness is sometimes an undesirable property, as it may cause friction, wear, drag, and fatigue, but it is sometimes beneficial, as it allows surfaces to trap lubri- cants and prevents them from welding together. Magnesium composites have promising properties for several industrial applications because of their low density [4]. Magnesium composite with metallic (electroless/electroplating) deposits are being used, in new light-weight engines which are less in weight and hence consume less energy. However, metallic coatings in magnesium are having multitudinous problems caused by surface roughness. Example of mechanical mal- function can be found in high-performance engine machine parts which are required to move or rotate at high speed with- out wear. Excess surface roughness can lead to unacceptably high levels of frictional heating, causing damage and even failure [5]. Surfactants are specifically added into the elec- trolyte bath to reduce the vertical component of surface ten- sion forces, which binds the nickel particles to the hydrogen gas bubbles generated during the plating reaction. Due to this, uniform and pit-free coating can be obtained. Smooth and pit-free electroless Ni–P deposits were obtained by adding 150 ppm of sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) to the electroless nickel bath [5]. Similarly, a very brief conclusion was derived by Hagiwara et al. [6] as well, who studied the effect of three different surfactants added in the Ni–P electroless bath on the