Hardness of titanium carbide films deposited on silicon by pulsed laser ablation

Hardness of titanium carbide films deposited on silicon (111) substrate by pulsed laser ablation is evaluated in dependence on laser beam fluence and the film thickness. Measurements were performed with the use of a common microhardness testing equipment, the indenter penetartion depth being more than thickness of the coating. Two methods based both on a law-of-mixtures approach were employed to calculate the film hardness from the measured hardness of the composite film-substrate system. One of them accounts for the indentation size effect. The hardness is revealed to reduce significantly with an increase of the film thickness and the laser beam fluence.