Deposition of Multilayered SI-C-N Nanocomposite Coatings from Single Target by Magnetron Sputtering for Engineering Applications

Abstract

Intense theoretical and experimental interests have been focused on the Ternary nanocomposite Si-C-N ceramic coatings which have shown excellent physical properties, such as high hardness, oxidation resistance and high thermal diffusivity. Mooloithic coatings of transition metal carbides/ nitrides and oxides are mostly used as hard protective coatings. But conventional hard ceramic coatings like SiC, Si3N4, TiC, TiN, cBN diamond coatings fail to provide the optimum properties and at the same time are expensive. Hard coatings of new compositions are always in demand if they could provide high performance and at the same time are less expensive than the existing. The new material is also required to be tougher. The relationship between hardness and wear has caused the scientific and engineering community to pursue the development of increasingly harder coatings but having reasonable toughness.