How it's "sprayed" varies greatly. Ion-plasma deposition isn't quite same as rattle-cans.
It's using plasma cutter in controlled process to actually melt metal at surface. Material is actually impregnated deep into cylinder surface. It's much tougher than home DIY ceramic-embedded coatings like Cerakote which just sits on surface. That's an improvement on plastic paints, but nothing like all-metal surface of cylinder coatings. Ford is starting to use similar ion-plasma cylinder prep.
Honda's silicon-carbide cylinders are formed from hollow sponge-like tube matrix 1st. Then the block is casted around it. Molten aluminium is wicked into the sponge to form the MMC cylinders. It's so tough, they have to use diamond-tipped cutting tools to do honing on these cylinders. It's not uncommon to find Honda VFRs with 200K-miles on block. There's actually one that broke 400K miles recently. Mine's only a baby compared to those @ 96K-miles.
One main benefit of these MMC cylinders is reduced friction; significantly smoother than surface of cast-iron (which is actually quite rough at microscopic level). When sliding Porsche piston in, I had to pull it back out because I thought I had forgotten to install rings! It just moved so smoothly! There's actually no break-in needed because the cylinders don't wear. Just run it hard to match rings to cylinders and that's it!
