Study of the interaction between a zirconium thin film and an EN C100 steel substrate: Temperature effect

Abstract

HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research documents, whether they are published or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. AbstractZirconium thin films were grown on high carbon steel substrates EN C100 (1 %wt. of carbon) by RF magnetron sputtering. In order to study the reactivity of the film/substrate system as a function of the temperature, one hour vacuum annealing was carried out for different temperatures between 600°C and 1100°C. The films were then analyzed by X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, glow discharge optical emission spectroscopy (GDOES) and nanoindentation.The obtained results showed a progressive transformation of zirconium film to zirconium carbide.Carbon atoms diffusion from substrate toward the film induced this transformation. The sample annealed at 900°C exhibited the best mechanicals properties (H =17 GPa and E = 220 GPa).Samples treated at higher temperature were affected by oxidation and high microporosity. Even if the conversion is uncomplete, annealing significantly promotes adhesion of the film on the substrate.

Effect of annealing treatment on the microstructure, mechanical and tribological properties of chromium carbonitride coatings

“…In addition, they transform into chromium carbonitride by the appearance of (111) and (131) Cr 3 N 0.6 C 0.4 at 41.02°and 51.20°, respectively (cubic structure, JCPDS 01 0892540) [25][26][27][28]. This agrees well with earlier works, where carbides and carbonitrides have been successfully formed from transition-metal-nitride-based thin films deposited on high carbon steel [17,21]. XRD analysis reveals that the Cr 2 N phase is thermally stable at 1000°C which can be attributed to the presence of sufficient chromium and nitrogen in the deposited coating.…”

“…This is mainly due to the disappearance of nitrogen in the Cr-N system. Similar behaviour was observed on annealed Zr/XC100 samples [17].…”

“…Recent studies of carbonitride Me(C, N) phases produced by high-energy ball milling are in line with these observations [24]. This is explained by the increase of microstructural strain or crystallite size effects in the film [17].…”

“…8.e). Moreover, we did not observe any cracks through the film thickness after annealing treatment at different temperatures suggesting that a high concentration of grain boundaries contributes to the relaxation of stresses in films and prevents the propagation of cracks [17].…”

“…Every time the annealing temperature rises, we stimulate the migration of a greater amount of carbon atoms to the film, which leads to the observed increase of the (410) Cr 7 C 3 peak intensity. This carbide is the most stable and the hardest among all the other carbide phases, especially when it is used as a coating for high carbon steel [6,17,20]. From Fig.…”