Research On The Deposition Technique And Microstructure Of Titanium Chromium Nitride Thin Films

This paper studies the deposition technique and microstructure of titaniumchromium nitride coatings and their mechanical properties. 45 steel and si patch wereselected as the substrate materials. The coatings were deposited in a Multi-Arc ion platingsystem. According to the concretely circumferences, the Ti and Cr concentrations werecontrolled by the changed position.The Ti/Cr-ratio has important influence on the morphology and mechanicalproperties. In the paper, the effects of bias-voltage,the Ti/Cr-ratio on the hardness,adhesion are investigated. The composition and morphology of the films have beenobserved by Scanning electron microscopy. The other characters of the coatings wereanalyzed by micro-hardness tester,scratch tester and AFM.The analyzing results show that the thickness of the coatings ,the hardness,theadhesion between coatings and substrates have compact relations to the bias-voltage andthe Cr compositions: the thickness was improved to the increase of the bias-voltage;thehardness of the films was increased to the improvement of the bias-voltage, and it wasdecreased to the increase of the Cr compositions. The adhesion was increased to theincrease of the bias-voltage and the Cr compositions.