Abstract
Nanocrystalline CrN films were deposited on Si (100) substrates by means of asymmetric pulsed DC reactive magnetron sputtering. We investigated the growth behavior, corrosion resistance and mechanical properties of CrN films with a change in the duty cycle and pulse frequency. The grain size of the CrN films decreased from 25.4 nm to 11.2 nm upon a decrease in the duty cycle. The corrosion potentials for the CrN films by DC sputtering was approximately - 0.6 V, and it increased to - 0.3 V in the CrN films which underwent pulsed sputtering. The nanoindentation hardness of the CrN films also increased with a decrease in the duty cycle. This enhancement of the corrosion resistance and mechanical properties of pulsed sputtered CrN films could be attributed to the densification and surface smoothness of the microstructure of the films.
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