Articles you may be interested inOrganic polymer thin films deposited on silicon and copper by plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition method and characterization of their electrochemical and optical properties J. Vac. Sci. Technol. A 23, 875 (2005); 10.1116/1.1946714 Effects of plasma excitation power, sample bias, and duty cycle on the structure and surface properties of amorphous carbon thin films fabricated on AISI440 steel by plasma immersion ion implantation Development of an energetic ion assisted mixing and deposition process for TiN x and diamondlike carbon films, using a co-axial geometry in plasma source ion implantation Dynamic plasma-based thin-film deposition incorporating ion mixing and plasma immersion is an effective technique to synthesize nitride-based hard films. We have fabricated TiN films using a filtered titanium vacuum arc in a nitrogen plasma environment. A pulsed high voltage is applied to the target for a short time when the metallic arc is fired to attain simultaneous plasma deposition and ion mixing. We investigate the dependence of the corrosion resistance and interfacial structure of the treated samples on the applied voltage. Our Auger results reveal an oxygen-rich surface film due to the non-ultra-high-vacuum conditions and high affinity of oxygen to titanium. The corrosion current is reduced by two orders of magnitude comparing the sample processed at 8 kV to the untreated sample, but the 23 kV sample unexpectedly shows worse results. The pitting potential diminishes substantially although the corrosion current is similar to that observed in the 8 kV sample. The polarization test data are consistent with our scanning electron microscopy observation, corroborating the difference in the pitting distribution and appearance. This anomalous behavior is believed to be due to the change in the chemical composition as a result of high-energy ion bombardment.