Tribological Evaluation of Ferritic-Austenitic Stainless Steel Coatings with Different Percentages of Silver

Stainless steels have been evaluated in the form of coatings or thin films deposited using magnetron sputtering in various investigations. In most of these investigations, mainly the microstructural evaluation of this type of coating has been reported, while the evaluation of wear resistance has not been widely studied. In the present investigation, ferritic-austenitic stainless steel coatings with different percentages of silver were deposited by means of unbalanced DC magnetron sputtering. A stainless steel target doped with different numbers of silver inserts (0, 1, 2, 3, and 4 inserts) was used, obtaining coatings with silver percentages of up to 7.7 at. %, in order to evaluate their tribological properties. During the synthesis, the first layer of the bilayer was deposited with argon and the other in an atmosphere of argon and nitrogen. The structure of the coatings was evaluated by use of X-ray diffraction (XRD), and the morphology and the chemical composition were studied by means of scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS), respectively. The hardness was tested through nanoindentation, and the wear test was carried out using the pin-on-disc technique. The wear tracks were evaluated via profilometry, SEM, and EDS. In general, the deposited films exhibited BCC and FCC phases and a compact morphology, as well as good adherence to the substrate. The results of the evaluation of the mechanical properties revealed an increase in the hardness of the coatings when the silver content was augmented, obtaining values of 9.8 GPa and 12.1 GPa for coatings with 0 and 4 silver inserts, respectively. Likewise, it was found that the wear resistance of coatings was higher, up to two orders of magnitude compared to the 316L stainless steel substrate. Finally, the wear rate of the multilayers decreased slightly with an increase in the percentage of silver in the films produced, up to an order of magnitude for the coating with 4 silver inserts relative to the coating with 0 silver inserts.