Transparent conducting Ti-Al co-doped zinc oxide films (TAZO) with high transparency and relatively low resistivity have been successfully prepared by direct current magnetron sputtering. The effect of sputtering power on the structural, optical, and electrical properties of Ti-Al co-doped films were investigated. The XRD patterns show that the thin films were highly textured along the c-axis and perpendicular to the surface of the substrate. The electrical resistivity decreases when the sputtering power increases from 40W to 120W. When the sputtering power is 120w and the target-substrate distance is 60mm, it is obtained that the lowest resistivity is 3.23×10-4Ω·cm.The lowest stress is 0.864Gpa in all the deposited films. All the films present a high transmittance of above 91% in the visible range.

SiAlON-cBN composites with different contents of cBN were consolidated by spark plasma sintering (SPS) at 1450°C using Y2O3, B2O3 and Al as additives. The effect of cBN content on the density, phase compositions, microstructures and mechanical properties of β-SiAlON-cBN composites was investigated. With increasing the cBN content, the density and hardness of β-SiAlON-cBN composites decreased. Fracture toughness could increase thanks to the crack deflection resulted from the cBN particles. For β-SiAlON-10 wt% cBN composites, the optimum hardness and highest relative density were 13 GPa and 96.4 %, respectively. For β-SiAlON-40 wt% cBN composites, the highest fracture toughness was KIC = 5.3 MPa∙m1/2.

cBN/SiAlON composites were prepared by spark plasma sintering (SPS) method using Si3N4, AlN, Al2O3,cBN and Y2O3 powders as raw materials. The sintering process is at the temperature of 1500°C holding for 5 min. Effect of the Y2O3 content on phase composition, microstructure, bulk density, hardness and fracture toughness of the cBN/SiAlON composite was investigated. The experimental results showed that when the Y2O3 content was 0.2 wt. % the bulk density and fracture toughness of the composite had the maximum values of 3.0 g/cm3 and KIC = 5.7 MPa∙m1/2, respectively. The cBN/SiAlON composite with 0.8 wt. % Y2O3 addition got the maximum hardness of 16.4 GPa.