This paper presents the effects of pulse plasma parameters such as duty cycle and pulse frequency on the properties of TiAlN coatings deposited by asymmetric bipolar pulsed DC magnetron sputtering systems. The results show that, with decreasing duty cycle and increasing pulse frequency, the coating morphology changes from a columnar structure to a dense structure with finer grains. Pulsed sputtered TiAlN coatings showed higher hardness, higher residual stress, and smaller grain sizes than did DC prepared TiAlN coatings. Moreover, residual stress and nanoindentation hardness of pulsed sputtered TiAlN coatings increased with increasing pulse frequency. Meanwhile, the surface roughness decreased continuously with increasing pulsed DC frequency up to 50 kHz.
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