Preparation And Characterization Of Nanometer Hard Films By PBAIP

Three different types of nanometer scaled films were deposited on HSS substrate by Pulsed Bias Arc Ion Plating (PBAIP) which consist of TiN single layered film, (Ti,Nb)N multi-component film under different pulsed bias conditions and Ti/TiN multilayered film. X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) and Transitional Electron Microscope (TEM) were used to characterize films' structure both in macroscopical and microcosmic. Combining with Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) and Auger Electron Spectrum (AES) we characterized the modulation structure multilayered films. The hardness of these three types of films were tested on both nanoindenter and Knoop hardness testing instrument and the results were compared for each method. Then we characterized films' adhesion force on scratching test equipment.Structure analysis indicates that XRD and TEM could characterize films' structure well. Calculation results of XRD and TEM observation show that all of these three types of films are all in nanometer scale.After erosion the sectional micrograph of Ti/TiN multilayered film presents an obvious modulation structure, which proved that a nanometer scaled multilayer film with clear modulation structure can be deposited by PBAIP.Although nanoindenter has a lot of virtues such as a lesser loading force, a higher precision and a good repetitiveness and et al., it is improper for those films with bad superficial quality. Thus a Knoop indenter is used to test this kind of films' hardness.The Knoop hardness of Ti/TiN nanometer multilayered film reaches 47.0GPa, which presents a so-called superhardness effect. TEM and XRD results indicate that the soft and the hard films alternative multilayered structure and fine grain size under this technics maybe the most possible reasons.Structure analysis of (Ti,Nb)N films indicates that the phase composition changes with increasing pulse bias. The film consists of (Ti,Nb)N phase with TiN type structure when at lower pulse bias but a detached phase of TiN and δ -NbN phase when at higher pulse bias. With the enhancement of pulse bias the grain size minishes and content of M2N phase increases gradually.The adhesion force between film and substrate of Ti/TiN multilayered film is better than TiN single layered film, which indicates that this kind of soft and hard alternative modulation structure can debase films' stress, and improve adhesion force. Adhesion results of (Ti,Nb)Nfilms under different pulse bias shows that the adhesion force enhanced with the increasing of substrate temperature but descend when the temperature is much higher for the thermo-stress increasing.