A Study of the Structural, Mechanical and Tribological Properties of Ti-Al-N Coatings Post-Treated by Carbon Implantation

Carbon ion implantation has often been considered as an additional method to further improve the wear, corrosion and oxidation resistance of hard coatings on tools or machine parts. The present research investigates the effect of carbon implantation on the structural and mechanical properties of the sputter-deposited solid solution Ti-Al-N coatings. The carbon implantation was carried out by using metal vapour vacuum arc ion source (MEVVA) with solid cathode at energies of 5 and 50 keV, and a dose of 6 x 10(17) atoms cm(-2). The mechanical and the microstructure properties of the implanted layer were identified by a variety of analytic techniques, such as nano-indentation, x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and x-ray diffraction (XRD) etc. Additionally, the wear performance of the samples was evaluated by a typical ball-on-disk tribometer in dry conditions. The results showed that the coatings with high energy carbon implantation exhibited an enhanced hardness. The improved hardness could be attributed to the formation of TiC phase, as indicated in XPS. In the sliding tests, the coatings with the post-treatment of carbon implantation showed an improved tribological property in terms of friction coefficient and wear rate. The friction coefficient could be reduced from 0.6 to 0.1. The coatings hail ten-fold better wear resistance than the coating without ion implantation.