Relationships between hardness, Young's modulus and elastic recovery in hard nanocomposite coatings

The paper is devoted to an assessment of the mechanical behavior of hard and superhard nanocomposite coatings from loading/unloading curves measured by a computer-controlled Fischerscope H 100 microhardness tester and a maximum depth d(max) of the diamond indenter impression into the coating at a given load L. It is shown that: (1) the area between the loading/unloading curve and the value of d(max) decreases with increasing (i) hardness H, (ii) effective Young's modulus E* = E/(1-upsilon(2)) and (iii) universal hardness HU, where E and upsilon are the Young's modulus and the Poisson ratio, respectively; and (2) there is no simple relation between the mechanical response of the coating and H or E alone: however, this response is strongly dependent on the ratio H/E*. The last fact gives a possibility of tailoring the mechanical properties of a coating for a given application, e.g. to prepare coatings with high hardness H, high resistance to plastic deformation (similar toH(3)/E*2), high elastic recovery W-e, but with low E* and high d(max). Special attention is also given to the analysis of problems in accurately measuring the hardness of superhard (greater than or equal to60 GPa) coatings. It is shown that a high elastic recovery W-e greater than or equal to 80% of superhard films with H greater than or equal to 60 GPa (1) strongly decreases the gradient dH/dL and (2) shifts the region L, where H(L) approximate to constant and the hardness H is correctly measured, to hi-her values of L. This means that the lowest load L used in the hardness measurement must be higher than L used in measurements of coatings with H < 60 GPa to prevent the value of H measured from being significantly higher than the real hardness of the coating. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.