Comparative Study of Tribomechanical Properties of HiPIMS with Positive Pulses DLC Coatings on Different Tools Steels

Abstract

Diamond-like carbon (DLC) coatings are very interesting due to their extraordinary properties; their excellent wear resistance, very low friction coefficient, great hardness, high elastic modulus or biocompatibility can be highlighted, as can their multifunctionality. Because of this, over recent decades they have been widely used in tribological applications, improving the performance and the useful life of machining tools in an effective way. However, these coatings have a disadvantage compared to other coatings deposited by commercially available techniques—their resultant adhesion is worse than that of other techniques and limits their industrial applications. In this work, tribological results of a scratch test, wear resistance and nanoindentation of tetrahedral amorphous carbon (ta-C) and tungsten carbide:carbon (WC:C) DLC coatings deposited by means of novel high-power impulse magnetron sputtering (HiPIMS) technology with positive pulses are reported. The coatings were deposited in three different tools steels: K360, vanadis 4 and vancron. These tools’ steels are very interesting because of their great and wide industrial applicability. Experimental results showed excellent tribological properties, such as resistance to wear or adhesion, in the two types of DLC coatings.

Improved Adhesion of the DLC Coating Using HiPIMS with Positive Pulses and Plasma Immersion Pretreatment

“…The sequence of parameters used for the different substrate pretreatments, as well as for the deposition of the coatings, is briefly described below following Claver et al [14].…”

“…The sequence of parameters used for the different substrate pretreatments, as well as for the deposition of the coatings, is briefly described below following Claver et al [14]. The chamber was evacuated by turbomolecular pumps and double-stage rotary vane pumps, reaching a base pressure of 10 −6 mbar.…”

“…Nevertheless, it is known that DLC coatings have low adhesion strength on metallic substrates [3,7], which is associated with the low density of the covalent chemical bonds together with the high compressive stress, and this makes them difficult to use in hightechnology applications [8][9][10][11][12]. Due to their poor adhesion properties, different alternatives are being studied to improve the adhesion of DLC treatment, such as the application of new technologies using a positive pulse HiPIMS surface treatment or the application of 2 of 20 thermochemical treatments prior to the coating-such as nitriding; these treatments can be used to improve adhesion and thus modify the tribological properties [5,13,14].…”

Improved Adhesion and Tribological Properties of AlTiN-TiSiN Coatings Deposited by DCMS and HiPIMS on Nitrided Tool Steels

“…The use of duplex PVD coatings for improving the adhesion of hard coatings has been reported in many studies [48][49][50][51]. Other novel techniques, such as HiPIMS with positive pulses [52] and closed-field unbalanced magnetron sputtering ion plating (CFUMSIP) [53], have also been used to improve the adhesion of PVD coatings in steel substrates. As reported in [49,50], duplex treatments based on plasma nitriding and magnetron sputtering showed critical scratch loads (Lc3) of about 60 N and 50 N, respectively.…”

Overview on the Antimicrobial Activity and Biocompatibility of Sputtered Carbon-Based Coatings

“…Moreover, the growth of these types of films can be performed at low temperatures (~200 • C) [24]. Consequently, the range of applications is huge, including use in cutting tools (drills) [25][26][27], automotive parts (piston rings, clutch plates, pumps, injectors) [28][29][30][31], optical components (lenses) [32], oxygen barrier films for plastic bottles [33,34], sanitary equipment (faucets) and bathtub mirrors [35], decorative items, windows [36,37], electrical and electronic equipment (hard disks, integrated circuits) [38,39], and molds (injection molding) [40][41][42][43]. Due to the excellent wear resistance and low friction properties, automotive applications are growing exponentially.…”