Deposition of Nb Doped CrYN Thin Films: Investigation of Structural, Mechanical and Tribological Properties

Hard coatings are generally applied to protect substrate surfaces from damage or deterioration. The development of hard protective coatings is increasingly encouraged, as machine elements used in the defense industry, automotive, aerospace, microelectronics and many other industrial applications require increasingly higher tribo-mechanical properties. Among these hard coatings such as CrN, CrYN and CrAlYN, which are deposited by closed-field unbalanced magnetron sputtering, which is one of the physical vapor depositions (PVD) techniques, are preferred because of their superior mechanical and thermal properties. In this study, Nb-added CrYN-based thin films were synthesized on 4140 (42CrMoS4), Si and glass substrates by closed-field unbalanced magnetron sputtering (CFUBMS) under different pressure, pulse frequency and pulse duty cycle. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) were used to determine the structural features. The mechanical properties were analyzed with microhardness tester and scratch tester. Tribological properties were obtained by pin-on-disc method under atmospheric conditions at room temperature.