Nano-Mechanical and Surface Morphological Properties of TiN Coating Produced by PVD on Tool Steel

Abstract

Thin films are increasingly used to improve the wear resistance of structural materials. The increased number and diversity of thin film coatings applied in industry arises an increased demand for practical and reliable characterization of surface coatings itself. A variety of tribological and mechanical testing procedures have been developed and used to evaluate different aspects of film quality. This work shows the test results of surface modified HS 6-5-2C tool steel substrates coated by physical vapor deposited (PVD) TiN layer. Two different commercially available PVD technologies were used for producing the test samples. The aim of this work was to analyze and evaluate the correlations between the surface morphology, plasticity, hardness and wear properties (during dry friction) of the coatings. Atomic force microscopy was used for characterizing the roughness of the surfaces, a dry friction ball-cratering test equipment for the wear tests and microhardness tests and nanoindentation for characterize the mechanical properties of the samples produced by different technologies.