Hm113

A standard tensile sample was cut as per the ASTM E8 standard, i.e., a dog bone shape sample with a gauge length of 20 mm. The tensile test samples were cut from the stir zone parallel to the tool traverse direction. The tensile test was carried out at a crosshead speed of 1.3 mm/min using the universal testing machine (TMC-Chennai, CUTM-50 kN, Chennai, India).
The microhardness test was carried out using Mitutoyo, Kanagawa, Japan HM113 machine, and the load applied was 50 g for 10 s. The sample dimensions, such as length and width used for the Vickers hardness test, were 30 mm and 6 mm, respectively. A diamond indenter with an angle of 136° between opposite faces was used.
A dry sliding wear test was carried out as per ASTM G99 standard [28 ] using DuCom Instrument (Make TR20-LE), Bangalore, India. The sliding distance used was 2500 m, the velocity applied was 1.5 m/s, and the load applied was 25 kg.

The prepared Zn-Co composite film is probed by a thin-film X-ray diffraction study (Model- X’Pert Pro powered by pANalytical). From the main diffracted peak, the average grain size can be estimated using the Scherer equation (1), $D_{(hkl)}=\frac{k\lambda }{\beta \mathrm{c}\mathrm{o}\mathrm{s}\theta }$ Here, $D_{(hkl)}$ is the average grain size, k is shape constant (0.9), λ is the incident wavelength of x-ray (λ = 0.15405 nm), β is the full width half maximum (FWHM), θ is the incident angle of x-ray. The prepared films’ morphology is examined by a field emission scanning electron microscope (FESEM) (Model- sigma essential powered by Zeiss Microscopy). The hardness inspection of the prepared films is measured with the HM-113 by Mitutoyo Corp Vickers hardness machine by applying 100 g load with a dwell time of 10 s. The electrochemical studies are probed through Autolab PGSTAT302N electrochemical workstation by Metrohm. The corrosion analysis evaluation was conducted with potentiodynamic polarization scanning (PPS) and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) with the immersion of 3.5 wt.% NaCl solution. The conventional three-electrode system was used for all the electrochemical studies. All the prepared films were served as a working electrode, Ag/AgCl as a reference electrode, platinum wire as a counter electrode.