The development of the high purity magnesium alloys (such as WE43) incites the designers to reconsider them, and the car industry appears, these days, the most interested to use this kind of alloy. However, due to their supposed ignitability and tendency to oxidation, magnesium alloys require surface treatments. A series of experiments was carried out in order to improve the corrosion resistance and the hardness of two types of magnesium alloys, WE43 and ZE41. In most cases, the substrate surface was treated before laser interaction. Mono-and multi-layer formation was realized using a 3kW cw Nd:YAG laser. The powders employed were all Al-based powders, since we tried to obtain intermetallic compounds, such as Al3Mg2, Al12Mg17. Microscopic (optical and SEM) observations as well as hardness determinations showed, in many cases, an important improvement concerning the followed properties of magnesium based alloys.

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