This review summarizes our most recent ndings in the structure and properties of amorphous and crystalline carbon nitride coatings, synthesized by reactive magnetron sputtering. By careful control of the plasma conditions via proper choice of process parameters such as substrate bias, target power and gas pressure, one can precisely control lm structure and properties. With this approach, we we...

Die casting process is used since long, but even today problems like erosion, corrosion, soldering and sticking affect die life. These dies undergo thermal cyclic loads from 70 oC to 600 oC during processing. Physical Vapor Deposition (PVD) hard coating can play an important role in such extreme applications. In the present work, we report the use of Chromium based multila...

The development of new cutting tool materials during the last few years is based mainly on submicron hardmetal substrates as well as on new PVD and CVD coatings. The development of submicron and nanopowders with higher strength and higher fracture toughness solves problems in machining high-temp alloys, hard materials, and in dry cutting. Based on physical models used to calculate stress in the...

The application of either hydroxyapatite (HA) or titanium dioxide (TiO2) as coatings onto existing bioinert materials has been explored as the key route for enhancing the surface properties of hard tissue implant devices. However, it has been proposed that composite HA/TiO2 coatings may provide significant advantages for the application of such surfaces. This work reports on the surface propert...

This thesis is concerned with self-organization phenomena in hard and wear resistant transition-metal nitride coatings, both during growth and during post-deposition thermal annealing. The uniting physical principle in the studied systems is the immiscibility of their constituent parts, which leads, under certain conditions, to structural variations on the nanoscale. The study of such structure...

A laboratory-based X-ray reflectometer has been developed to measure the performance of hard X-ray multilayer coatings at their operational X-ray energies and incidence angles. The instrument uses a sealed-tube X-ray source with a tungsten anode that can operate up to 160 kV to provide usable radiation in the 15-150 keV energy band. Two sets of adjustable tungsten carbide slit assemblies, space...

Nanostructured coatings with variable contents of tungsten carbide (WC) and amorphous carbon (a-C) are prepared by controlling the sputtering power ratio using WC and graphite targets. XRD and TEM/ED analysis shows that increasing the C incorporation, the WC nanocrystalline phases evolve from γ-W2C to β-WC1-x. Further C enrichment leads to a nanocomposite structure of small WC1-x crystals dispe...

In this paper, we present the results of a study of TiN thin fi lms which are deposited by a Physical Vapour Deposition (PVD) and Ion Beam Assisted Deposition (IBAD). In the present investigation the subsequent ion implantation was provided with N2+ ions. The ion implantation was applied to enhance the mechanical properties of surface. The thin fi lm deposition process exerts a number of eff ec...

A cold-wall upstream reactor was designed to study the deposition of P-Sic layers on WC-Co hard metal substrates. Experiments demonstrated that P-Sic coatings can be easily deposited on inductively heated substrates at temperatures between 1000-1400°C by thermal decomposition of 1,2-dimethyldisilane under normal pressure conditions. It was shown that this silicon compound is an advanced precurs...

In response to increased evidence of ecosystem damage by toxic antifouling paints, many researchers have developed nontoxic silicone fouling release coatings. The fouling release capability of these Systems may be improved by adding nonbonding silicone oils to the coating matrix. This idea has been tested by comparing the adhesion strength of hard- and soft-fouling organisms on a cured polydime...