Wear Characterization of Chromium PVD Coatings on Polymeric Substrate for Automotive Optical Components

Abstract

The automotive industry is a pioneer in solutions that meet market expectations. However, in the automotive industry, some less environmentally friendly technologies are still used, such as electroplating. Due to legislative restrictions in several countries, thin coatings made in a vacuum have been replacing coatings traditionally made by electroplating, mainly in decorative terms. This work is more focused on the use of these coatings made in vacuum for optical applications, namely on headlights and exterior backlit components. Although these components are protected during the period of use, there may be situations of contact during the assembly of the components or their repair, necessary to safeguard and to ensure that these coatings have the scratch and wear resistance needed to withstand any treatment deficiency during the operations referred to above. Therefore, this work is essentially focused on the study of the wear resistance of Cr coatings made by PVD (Physical Vapour Deposition) on polymeric substrates. To this end, the coatings previously studied have now been subjected to micro-abrasion tests, with a view to assessing their wear resistance. For this purpose, alumina abrasive has been used, and the wear mechanisms observed in the coatings were studied. The abrasion and scratch tests showed that the most stable film has the one provided with 10-layers, showing greater wear resistance as well, greater adhesion to the substrate and less cohesive failures in the performed tests. Given the nature of the substrate and the coating, the results obtained are very promising, showing that these 10-layer Cr thin coatings can overcome any careless operation during manufacturing, assembly and repair processes, when applied in lightning or backlit components in motor vehicles.

Noise Evaluation of Coated Polymer Gears

“…They are dispersed at the atomic or molecular level. PVD is used in order to achieve high adhesion and hardness, to improve wear resistance, to improve tribological properties [ 27 ], and to improve optical properties [ 28 , 29 ] in various applications.…”

“…Physical Vapour Deposition (PVD) is another technique that may be used to improve the wear resistance of contacting mechanical elements (PVD-coatings are described further in Section 2 ). As presented by Baptista et al [ 27 , 28 ], Fereira et al [ 29 ], Abdulah et al [ 30 ], and Imbeni et al [ 31 ], the PVD-technology has been used widely for the deposition of thin metal coatings on the polymeric substrate to improve wear resistance and other characteristics (optical enhancement, visual/aesthetical upgrading, etc.) of the analysed polymeric component.…”

Study on the Micro-Abrasion Wear Behavior of PVD Hard Coating under Different SiC Abrasive Particles/Distilled Water Ratios

“…The principle is extremely simple, leading to the possibility of using relatively small and easily prepared samples, using reasonably inexpensive equipment, and presenting very good flexibility and repeatability. Furthermore, the handling of this type of equipment does not require a very refined specific training [11,12]. Given the advantages mentioned above, several groups of researchers dedicated their attention and efforts to the study of this methodology, with a view to its standardization.…”

Producing of high-transparent antiscratch nanohybrid thin films on polycarbonate substrate

“…Despite all of its useful properties, PC always suffers from poor scratch resistance and vulnerability to the environmental damages. There are many efforts being done to increase its hardness and scratch resistance by applying sol-gel hard coatings [4][5][6][7][8], incorporating hard nanoparticles into the melt polymer [9], coatings applied by physical and chemical vapor deposition [3,10] and plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition [11,12]. From cost and simplicity point of views, hard sol-gel coatings for improving PC properties is a very common method.…”