Thermal Stability of Nanostructured Coatings

Abstract

Abstract. This paper is a review of the thermal stability of nanostructured nitride coatings synthesised by reactive magnetron sputtering technique. In the last three decade, nitride based coatings have been widely applied as hard wear-protective coatings in mechanical components. More recently, a larger interest has been addressed to evaluate the thermal stability of such coatings, as their mechanical and tribological properties are deteriorated at high working temperatures.This study describes the microstructural, mechanical and compositional stability of nanocrystalline Cr-N and nano-composited Ti-N based coatings (Ti-Al-Si-B-N and Ti-Cr-B-N) after air and vacuum annealing. For Cr-N coatings annealing in vacuum induces phase transformation from CrN to Cr 2 N, while after annealing in air only Cr 2 O 3 phase is present. For Ti-N based coatings, a well-definite multilayered structure was shown after air annealing. Degradation of mechanical properties was observed for all the nitride coatings after thermal annealing in air.

Advanced Nanomaterials for Nuclear Energy and Nanotechnology

“…Aluminum distribution and nanostructure of the oxidation behavior had a strong influence on thermal stability. Raveh et al, Fabrizi et al, and He et al have written detailed reviews on the thermal stability of nanostructured coatings. The discussion on thermal stability is of prime importance as any material exposed to a high neutron flux environment in the nuclear reactor is constantly subjected to high‐temperature stress.…”