Microstructure and mechanical properties of W-C:H coatings deposited by pulsed reactive magnetron sputtering

Empirical-Statistical Study on the Relationship between Deposition Parameters, Process Variables, Deposition Rate and Mechanical Properties of a-C:H:W Coatings

“…The range of measured values of the Young's modulus of the a-C:H:W variants of E = 80 − 253 GPa is in good agreement with those published by other authors (E = 92 − 143 GPa [11]; E = 140 − 240 GPa [5]). The same applies to the measured values of the indentation hardness in the range of H IT = 7.8 − 22.0 GPa.…”

“…A comparison between the deposition rate at the lowest and at the highest factor level of φ(C 2 H 2 ) shows that, within this parameter range,ṫ almost doubles (see also Figure 2). A similarly strong increase in the deposition rate with increasing ethine flow rate, whilst other parameters are kept constant, is also reported in [11] and [15]. As already mentioned in Section 1, the reason is that, with the increasing availability of the precursor, the reactive component of the film deposition process is enhanced, resulting in an increased carbon content of a-C:H:W [10,12,37] and a decreased film density [12].…”

“…The same applies to the measured values of the indentation hardness in the range of H IT = 7.8 − 22.0 GPa. Hardness values documented in the literature are almost entirely covered (H IT = 8 − 17 GPa [13]; H IT = 8 − 18 GPa [5];H IT = 11 − 14 GPa [11]; H IT = 16 − 23 GPa [12]). As shown in Figure 7, there is a very strong correlation between E and H IT .…”

Investigations on Wear Mechanisms of PVD Coatings on Carbides and Sialons

“…It was demonstrated from the GDOES analysis that in the contact zone, from the surface of the coatings, there is a rise in the concentration of the elements that are components of the substrate, with a simultaneous decrease of the concentration of those elements which are components of the coating. As suggested by the authors of earlier works [15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25], this may be due to the presence of a transit zone of a diffusive character between the substrate material and the coating, although we cannot rule out the possibility of simultaneous non-homogeneous evaporation of the material from the surface of the samples during the glow discharge spectrometer tests.…”

“…The rapid development of PVD technology started in the eighties, associated with a wide use of refractory compounds of carbon, nitrogen and boron, in particular with transition metals, as deposition of a thin, hard, anti-wear coating is one of the most important ways to reduce tool wear. Reducing the wear rate and increasing the durability, a low coefficient of thermal conductivity and wear on the effects of high temperature, and in many cases reducing the oxidation and corrosion processes largely determines the use of coatings obtained in the PVD process and, in some cases, the CVD process for coating of tool materials [11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25].…”