Experimental and modeling study on the role of Ar addition to the working gas on the development of intrinsic stress in TiN coatings produced by filtered vacuum-arc plasma

Influence of the Inert Gas Pressure on Intrinsic Stress in Diamond-Like Coating Deposited From Vacuum Arc Carbon Plasma

“…Note that the case of carbon coating deposition in the inert gas atmosphere differs from a similar case of deposition of the TiN coating, since in the latter case the increase in pressure led not to the decrease, but, on the contrary, to the increase in intrinsic stress in the TiN coating [14]. CONCLUSION 1.…”

Effect of high-voltage pulse bias on the stress and morphology of CA-PVD TiN coatings

“…During the deposition process, the substrate surface is bombarded by both metal ions (Ti) emitted from the cathode and gas ions (nitrogen and argon) generated by the collision of neutral gas atoms with the metal ion plasma. Acceleration of all types of ions occurs with the application of negative bias potential to the substrate [7,31]. In the absence of Ar, the main contribution to the bombardment is from Ti ions since nitrogen ions are very light to render any substantial effect.…”

“…On the other hand, it is well known from filtered CA systems that using HVPB introduces an opportunity to control stress build-up of nitride-based coatings [5,6]. Recently, we have adapted this method to unfiltered cathodic arc systems and observed similar preferred orientation changes as seen in the filtered arc systems [6,7]. We also determined the critical role of Ar presence in the gas mixture in these changes [8].…”

“…For coatings deposited in the N 2 +Ar gas mixture, total stress increased by the application of −1000 V pulse bias and then decreased with the increase of pulse bias to −1500 V (Table 2). The changes in the residual stress of the coatings, by applying different magnitudes of pulse bias voltage, are explained as a result of two simultaneous but differently directed processes: (1) stress generation due to ion implantation and defect production; (2) stress relaxation due to thermally activated processes of defect migration in the nonlocal thermoelastic peaks of ions [7,13]. According to this model, the stress reduction by the increase of pulse bias to −1500 V can be explained by the domination of stress relaxation effects.…”

“…For TiN films grown with CA-PVD, the relationship between residual stress development and HVPB magnitude has already been shown in several studies [5][6][7]13]. The changes in the residual stress were mainly explained by the atomic scale defect generation inside the grains and their annihilations [7,13]. However, in these studies, the role of stress generated at the grain boundaries [14][15][16][17][18], which is strongly related to the microstructure of the coatings, had not been taken into account.…”