Superhard Thin Film Coatings

As a result of increased requirements for abrasion resistant and protective thin film coatings, the hardness of thin film coatings has been steadily increasing over the past decade, due primarily to new materials, improved deposition processes and use of nanostructures and nanocomposites. Because it would not be possible to address all these materials, we will briefly describe the following broad categories, with emphasis on nanostructured thin films:

Binary thin films, including transition metal based materials, chromium-based materials, boron-based materials, carbon and diamond-based materials, tungsten and molybdenum based materials.
Ternary thin film materials
Quaternary and higher component thin film materials
Nanostructured materials
Wear resistant thin films are deposited by a wide variety of processes, but most often by physical vapor deposition (PVD) and chemical vapor deposition (CVD) techniques because they can be scaled up to industrial sizes and quantities. Read More