Carbon occupancy of interstitial sites in vanadium carbide films deposited by direct current reactive magnetron sputtering

Vanadium carbide coatings were deposited by R.F. reactive magnetron sputtering at different nitrogen partial pressures. The structures and the mechanical and tribological behaviour of these coatings were studied. By using a combined approach of EDS and WDS, it has been shown that increasing nitrogen concentration from 0 to 27 at.% led to decrease the carbon content from 48.50 to 30.50 at.%. All coatings exhibited a dominant fcc-VC structure with additional fractions of vanadium nitrides, as determined by XRD. Nanoindentation measurements showed that the highest hardness of 26.1 GPa was obtained for the coating with a (N + C) / (V) ratio equal to 1.44. The transition in brittleness-ductile failure mode was noticed with increasing nitrogen content. This adhesive feature can prevent phase separation and improves the wear resistance of the coatings. Moreover, the nitrogen partial pressure showed a significant influence on the friction coefficient because of film density and residual stress effects.

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“…The average crystalline size of the coatings was determined with the Scherrer formula (Eq. (1)) [13]:…”

Section: Characterizations: Xrd Sem Eds Xps Nanoindentation and Tmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Also, Wu et al [10] studied the effect of carbon content on the mechanical properties and electronic structure of various vanadium carbides. Until now, previous studies have reported the elaboration of vanadium carbides by different methods such as: pulsed laser deposition, magnetron sputtering and electron beam deposition [11][12][13].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evolution of microstructure, mechanical and tribological properties of vanadium carbonitride coatings sputtered at different nitrogen partial pressures

Aissani

Alhussein

Nouveau

et al. 2019

Surface and Coatings Technology

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“…ZrC thin films have been grown via reactive sputtering of elemental Zr in hydrocarbon/Ar gas mixtures [3,13], sputtering of compound ZrC [14,15] and Zr and C targets [16] in pure Ar discharges, sol-gel synthesis [17], chemical vapor deposition [18][19][20], and pulsed laser deposition [21,22]. Among all these techniques, reactive sputter-deposition has been the most commonly used method to grow ZrC and other TMC thin films [3,13,16,[23][24][25][26][27][28]. In this approach, one can control both the thin film composition and the growth rate by appropriate choice of the reactive gas and its flux [29].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Influence of ultra-low ethylene partial pressure on microstructural and compositional evolution of sputter-deposited Zr-C thin films

Zaid

Aleman

Tanaka

et al. 2020

Surface and Coatings Technology

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Zr-C thin films are grown on single-crystalline MgO(001) substrates via ultra-high vacuum dc magnetron sputtering of Zr target in 10 mTorr Ar-C2H4 gas mixtures with ethylene partial pressures (p C 2 H 4) between 2 × 10-7 Torr and 2 × 10-4 Torr at substrate temperature Ts = 923 K and using p C 2 H 4 = 2 × 10-6 Torr at 723 K ≤ Ts ≤ 1123 K. The as-deposited layer microstructure and composition are determined using X-ray diffraction, transmission electron microscopy, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. We find that the layers sputter-deposited at Ts = 923 K using the lowest p C 2 H 4 = 2 × 10-7 Torr are polycrystalline, close-packed hexagonal structured Zr:C solid solutions. At higher p C 2 H 4 = 2 × 10-6 Torr and 2 × 10-5 Torr, we obtain films composed of freecarbon (C) and NaCl-structured ZrCx, x  1. The amount of C increases 104% with tenfold increase in p C 2 H 4 from 2 × 10-6 Torr to 2 × 10-5 Torr. At the highest p C 2 H 4 = 2 × 10-4 Torr, the layers are X-ray amorphous with ~ 49 at.% C. Films grown at 723 K ≤ Ts ≤ 1123 K using constant p C 2 H 4 = 2 × 10-6 Torr exhibit qualitatively similar microstructures, irrespective of Ts, composed of dense columnar ZrCx grains surrounded by C and corrugated surfaces. Our results suggest that the compositional and microstructural evolution of Zr-C films during reactive 2 sputter-deposition of Zr is highly sensitive to ethylene partial pressure, with as little as 0.02% of the total pressure sufficient at Ts ≥ 723 K to obtain ZrCx films.

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“…Various methods are being used for VC coatings and thin film deposition. These methods include reactive magnetron sputtering (Ferro et al ., ; Wu et al ., ), DC reactive magnetron sputtering (Aguzolli et al ., ; Portolan et al ., ), thermal diffusion (TD, Fazluddin et al ., ), femtosecond pulsed laser deposition (Teghil et al ., ), electron probe micro‐analysis (Aouni et al ., ), and hydrothermal processes (Ma et al ., ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Vanadium carbide (VC) thin films have relatively high hardness, a high melting point, good chemical stability, good electrical conductivity, and high thermal conductivity (Ferro et al, 2008;Aguzolli et al, 2012). VC coatings are used for protective hard coatings, wear protection, and friction reduction in turbine blades and cutting tools (Ferro et al, 2008;Portolan et al, 2009;Aguzolli et al, 2012). VC coatings also have good corrosion resistance compared with alloys (Fazluddin et al,'95).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nanostructured vanadium carbide thin films produced by RF magnetron sputtering

Pat

Korkmaz

2015

Scanning

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In this paper, nanostructured vanadium carbide thin films were deposited on glass substrates and their optical and surface properties were analyzed. All produced samples were transparent in the optical region. Refractive index values were calculated using the Drude model. According to contact angle measurements of the coated surfaces, the samples show high wettability. The surface free energies of the samples were found to be very similar. The influence of the nitrogen content in the buffer gas mixture was determined; it was concluded that the microstructure, refractive index, surface morphology, surface free energy, and thickness of thin films can change in response to the nitrogen concentration of the radio frequency (RF) buffer gas.

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Carbon occupancy of interstitial sites in vanadium carbide films deposited by direct current reactive magnetron sputtering

Cited by 19 publications

References 15 publications

Evolution of microstructure, mechanical and tribological properties of vanadium carbonitride coatings sputtered at different nitrogen partial pressures

Evolution of microstructure, mechanical and tribological properties of vanadium carbonitride coatings sputtered at different nitrogen partial pressures

Influence of ultra-low ethylene partial pressure on microstructural and compositional evolution of sputter-deposited Zr-C thin films

Nanostructured vanadium carbide thin films produced by RF magnetron sputtering

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