NEW TRENDS IN HARD COATINGS TECHNOLOGY

The technology of hard coatings based on stoichiometric titanium nitride thin films has been innovated in the past few years in order to fulfill the requirements for higher performance and lower processing cost. The different strategies used to improve the performance consisted in modifying the coating composition by introducing other elements than Ti and N, like C, Cr, Al and others in the film (multicomponent coatings), in modifying the structure by using multilayers and graded composition interfaces (composite coatings), and in altering the density, porosity and texture by using plasma and ion beam assisted processing. In the present work we describe the extensive use of ion beam methods like Rutherford backscattering spectrometry and nuclear reaction analysis to characterize new titanium nitride based coatings belonging to all these different strategies mentioned above. Based on the results of ion beam analysis and on the results obtained from other characterization methods, together with corrosion tests as well as certain tribologic characteristics like wear, hardness and elasticity of the coatings it was possible to establish correlations between the coatings characteristics and their performance.