Study on the phase structure and mechanical properties of (Ti,Al,Si)N coatings deposited by multiarc ion plating

Abstract

Different structural [Formula: see text] coatings were designed and deposited on WC-Co cemented carbide by the technology of multiarc ion plating. Monolayered [Formula: see text] coating was deposited using cathode of [Formula: see text]. Multilayered (Ti,Al)N/[Formula: see text] coating and [Formula: see text] coating with gradual silicon content were deposited using two cathodes of [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text] simultaneously. The surface and cross-section morphology, compositions, and phase structure were characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD). The dense [Formula: see text] coatings with droplets on the surface and without obvious columnar structure on the cross-sections were obtained. All coatings had the strong peaks of (200) orientation. The different angular shift occurred with different combination of cathodes and processes. The introduction of multilayered and gradient structure effectively reduced the lattice distortion of coatings. Meanwhile, the coating-substrate adhesion strength increased from 38.57 N to 60.17 N with a coating thickness of approximately 3.5 [Formula: see text]m by scratch tests. The highest hardness of [Formula: see text] coating obtained in this paper were [Formula: see text] GPa by nanoindentation. The multilayered coating showed better toughness.