Production and characterization of dry lubricant coatings for tools on the base of carbon

The present development is a layer compound of the category dry lubricant film, how they are in development for coating of tools and machine parts world-wide. The basic composition of the compound structure is the combination of the classical hard coatings titanium nitride (TiN) and titanium carbonitride (TiCN) as multilayer. These coatings are generated by means of physical vapour deposition from high rate coating sources to the principle of electrical are vaporization and magnetron sputtering. The on it following dry lubricant coating is based of amorphous, diamond like carbon (DLC) deposited by means of plasma enhanced-chemical vapour deposition in an electron cyclotron resonance plasma in the same recipient. During the operating procedure the amorphous carbon takes the part of lubricant action. the basic multilayer TiN and TiCN guarantee the well-known long useful life of the tool, The lubricant action of the carbon layer is not only at the beginning of the use or operating procedure, The carbon layer compounds with the wear protecting film of TiN and TiCN during the action and prolong the lifetime again more explicitly. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.