Thermal stability and mechanical properties of amorphous coatings in the Ti-B-Si-Al-N system grown by cathodic arc evaporation from TiB2, Ti33Al67, and Ti85Si15 cathodes

Abstract

Ti-B-Si-Al-N coatings were grown on cemented carbide substrates in an industrial scale cathodic arc evaporation system using Ti 33 Al 67 , Ti 85 Si 15 , and TiB 2 cathodes in a reactive N 2 atmosphere. The microstructure of the as-deposited coatings changes from nanocrystalline to amorphous with addition of (B+Si+Al), or high amounts of (B+Si) to TiN. In the as-deposited state, the 4 µm-thick amorphous coatings are dense and homogenous, besides slight compositional modulation with Ti-rich layers induced by rotation of the substrate holder fixture during deposition, and have unusually few macroparticles. Annealing at temperatures ranging from 700• C to 1100• C results in that the coatings crystallize by clustering of TiN grains. The hardness of as-deposited amorphous coatings is 17-18 GPa, and increases to 21 GPa following annealing at 800• C. At annealing temperatures of 1000• C and above the hardness decreases due to inter-diffusion of Co from the substrate to the coating.

High temperature behavior of functional TiAlBSiN nanocomposite coatings

“…The more possible reason is a low density of the short range ordered species (bonds) with high strength. In earlier works, the hardness of the amorphous TiAlBSiN coatings was reported to be~15 GPa [81], 21 GPa [80] and 17.1 ± 0.5 GPa [21] and the growth of hardness was observed for coatings reported in [21] and [81] up to 21 GPa after annealing at 700°C and up to~20 GPa after annealing at 800°C, respectively, but the hardness decreased for higher annealing temperatures [80].…”

“…Following this idea, oxidation resistance of the coatings strongly depends on the thermal stability of its amorphous structure and the interdiffusion of the elements in both coating and substrate. The effect of substrate elements diffusing into the protective coating structure was reported in many papers [21][22][23][24]. It was shown that the crystallization starts directly at the coating/substrate interface due to the diffusion of substrate elements into the coating layer [23,24].…”

Vacuum arc plasma generation and thin film deposition from a TiB2cathode

“…12 These routes remain to be confirmed, although a stable arc process has been reported for the use of a TiB 2 cathode in N 2 for synthesis of nitride multielement alloys. 13 In this letter, we have explored conditions allowing the stable vacuum arc plasma generation from a TiB 2 cathode. The erosion of the cathode surface is correlated to charge-state-resolved plasma analysis of ion chemistry and ion energy, macroparticle generation, as well as resulting film composition.…”

Growth and properties of amorphous Ti–B–Si–N thin films deposited by hybrid HIPIMS/DC-magnetron co-sputtering from TiB2 and Si targets

“…We have chosen the Ti-Si-B-N system for exploring amorphous nitrides, first grown by arc-deposition [11]. Here, we report the growth and properties of amorphous (TiB2) 1−x Si x N thin films deposited using a hybrid powering setup, where the Si target is operated in a conventional DCMS mode and the TiB2 target is operated in HIPIMS [12] mode.…”