Structure and properties of high power impulse magnetron sputtering and DC magnetron sputtering CrN and TiN films deposited in an industrial scale unit

Deposition of complex shaped or round-symmetric samples requires multi-fold substrate rotations during deposition or multiple cathode arrangements. The present paper investigates the influence of the high power impulse magnetron sputtering (HIPIMS) and DC magnetron sputtering (DCMS) process on the mechanical and tribological properties as well as the resulting structure of CrN and TiN coatings using static (0-fold) and dynamic (1-, 2- and 3-fold) depositions in an industrial scale unit. Furthermore, to increase the deposition rate without losing the high ion density in the plasma a hybrid HIPIMS/DCMS deposition technique is investigated. The results demonstrate the advantage of the HIPIMS technique when using multi-fold substrate rotation during deposition as it enables depositions of CrNHIPIMS and TiNHIPIMS coatings with hardness values around 23 and 35 GPa, respectively, compared with around 15 GPa for CrNDCMS and TiNDCMS coatings. Hardness values of 35 GPa for TiNDCMS coatings prepared with substrate rotations could only be obtained when introducing an additional anode or using a multilayered CrNHIPIMS/TiNDCMS base layer as a template. Based on our results we can conclude that especially for up-scaling and multi-fold substrate rotations the HIPIMS process offers an improved performance as compared to DCMS. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.