Microstructure and Rutherford Backscattering Spectrometry of Hard/Lubricant Mo-Ti-Al-N Multilayered Coatings Prepared by Multi-Arc Ion Plating at Low Substrate Rotation

Abstract

To develop the hard and self-lubricating coatings applied for the industrial dry-cutting and die-casting machining tool fields, a series of MoTiAlN/MoN/Mo multilayered coatings were deposited on Si substrates under low substrate rotation by cathodic multi-arc ion plating. XRD, SEM, TEM, RBS, nanoindentation, and tribology tester were used to monitor the phase structure, morphology, component, nanohardness, and friction coefficient of the coatings. It was found that the coatings deposited at various substrate rotations comprised paramount cubic B1 structure TiAlN and Mo2N phases. The micrographs confirmed that the mean modulation period and total physical thickness of multilayered TiAlN/Mo2N coatings with a sharp interface fabricated at 2 revolutions per minute (rpm) were 26 nm and 1.15 μm. The mean nanohardness and friction coefficient were ca. 30 GPa and 0.4, respectively. RBS results along with the SIMNRA code allowed to estimate the total atomic concentrations and the physical thickness of individual sublayer as well as the modulation period of multilayered coatings, which demonstrated an efficiency of this approach for characterization of nano-multilayered structures.