HARDNESS, ADHESION AND ABRASION RESISTANCE OF TIO2 FILMS ON GLASS

TiO//2 films were deposited onto BK 7 and machine-drawn glass by the reactive processes of evaporation, plasma discharge sputtering and ion plating. An attempt has been made to determine the hardness of the film itself with Vickers ultramicrohardness tests on an evaporated sample. The result is about 300 HV at a pyramid load of 1 gf. The adhesion of the films to the glass was investigated by a scratch test. It was poor for films evaporated onto unheated substrates, but could be increased remarkably either by heating the substrates or by increasing the energy of the condensing particles. This also led to excellent abrasion resistance which depends more on the adhesion than on differences in the hardness of the film for such material.