Mechanical and Tribology Properties of Electrodeposited Ni-TiN/Si₃N₄ Composite Coatings

Abstract

Ni-TiN/Si3N4 composite coatings on tungsten carbide were prepared by electrodeposition. The influences of electrodeposition temperature at 35 – 45 °C on coating microstructure and its impact to the mechanical and tribology properties were investigated to optimize the process parameter. A compact morphology of coatings gradually increased with increasing electrodeposition temperature that was addressed to the finer Ni crystallite size which resulted from co-deposition of TiN and Si3N4 particles. The finer crystallite size caused the increase of coating hardness with the highest (8.86 GPa) was achieved for the sample deposited at 45 °C. However, from the result of wear rate test, it was shown that the lowest wear rate (28.5 μm) was observed on the sample deposited at 40 °C.