Journal
JOURNAL OF APPLIED PHYSICS
Volume 121, Issue 17, Pages -Publisher
AMER INST PHYSICS
DOI: 10.1063/1.4977818
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Funding
- Swedish Research Council VR Grant [2013-4018, 2014-5790]
- VINN Excellence Center Functional Nanoscale Materials (FunMat)
- Aforsk Foundation Grant [16-359]
- Swedish Government Strategic Research Area in Materials Science on Functional Materials at Linkoping University [SFO-Mat-LiU 2009-00971]
- Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation [2011.0143]
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Hard Ti1-xAlxN thin films are of importance for metal-cutting applications. The hardness, thermal stability, and oxidation resistance of these coatings can be further enhanced by alloying with TaN. We use a hybrid high-power pulsed and dc magnetron co-sputtering (HIPIMS/DCMS) technique to grow dense and hard Ti0.41Al0.51Ta0.08N alloys without external heating (T-s < 150 degrees C). Separate Ti and Al targets operating in the DCMS mode maintain a deposition rate of similar to 50 nm/min, while irradiation of the growing film by heavy Ta+/Ta2+ ions from the HIPIMS-powered Ta target, using dc bias synchronized to the metal-ion-rich part of each HIPIMS pulse, provides effective near-surface atomic mixing resulting in densification. The substrate is maintained at floating potential between the short bias pulses to minimize Ar+ bombardment, which typically leads to high compressive stress. Transmission and scanning electron microscopy analyses reveal dramatic differences in the microstructure of the co-sputtered HIPIMS/DCMS films (Ta-HIPIMS) compared to films with the same composition grown at floating potential with all targets in the DCMS mode (Ta-DCMS). The Ta-DCMS alloy films are only similar to 70% dense due to both inter-and intra-columnar porosity. In contrast, the Ta-HIPIMS layers exhibit no inter-columnar porosity and are essentially fully dense. The mechanical properties of Ta-HIPIMS films are significantly improved with hardness and elastic modulus values of 28.0 and 328 GPa compared to 15.3 and 289 GPa for reference Ta-DCMS films. Published by AIP Publishing.
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