Characterizations of Magnetron Sputtered CrSiN/ZrN Multilayer Coatings—from Structure to Tribological Behaviors
✍ Scribed by Zhiguo Zhang; Olivier Rapaud; Nathalie Allain; David Mercs; Mira Baraket; Chuang Dong; Christian Coddet
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 2009
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 647 KB
- Volume
- 11
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 1438-1656
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✦ Synopsis
Transition metal nitride multilayers (e.g., TiN/CrN. TiN/ ZrN, CrN/ZrN, CrN/AlN etc. [1][2][3][4][5][6] ) have been studied intensively and show outstanding mechanical and tribological properties in comparison with their homogeneous monolayer nitride coatings. The current research interests in the multilayers are mostly devoted to the enhanced hardness effects. The superhard effects are usually achieved when the multilayer modulation periodicity decreases into a nano dimension. For instance, CrN/AlN multilayer coatings show a superhardness of 40 GPa when the modulation periodicity is 3.8 nm. [6] Apart from the superhardness, multilayer structures are permitted to combine different coating properties such as wear-reducing functions, thermal stabilities at a high temperature and corrosion resistance. The multilayer properties can be improved by a careful structure design, e.g., grain size, morphology, as well as thickness ratio of constituent, and numbers of interfaces. [7] Recently, it is reported that adding silicon to transition metal nitrides can significantly improve their mechanical properties including hardness, toughness, and oxidation resistance, which are the desirable qualities for most wear-resistance coatings. [8] The formed nanocomposite coatings can be understood in terms of the phase mixture where the nanometer-sized crystals are embedded into a preferably strong and thin amorphous matrix. The well documented Ti-Si-N coating developed by Veprek et al. [9] shows an enhanced hardness more than 40 GPa. This high hardness can even remain unchanged until a high temperature nearly 1000 8C. In pursuit of such design ideas proposed by Veprek, [9] the investigations of such kind of nanocomposite COMMUNICATION [