Abstract
Abstract Amorphous hydrogenated diamond-like carbon (DLC) coatings containing a small amount of titanium have been deposited onto AISI 420 steel substrates by unbalanced magnetron sputtering. In order to make the diamond-like carbon coating adhere to the metal, four kinds of graded interlayers, i.e. Ti, TiN, TiCN and TiC, have been used, taking advantage of the fact that the Ti layer adheres to the metal and DLC adheres to the TiC layer. The total thickness of the DLC coatings is 2.0 μm. The DLC coatings showed excellent properties, i.e. high microhardness values (higher than 39 Hv (GPa)), excellent adhesion (Lc 10.0–11.0 kg), friction coefficients against an A1 2 O 3 ceramic ball being in the range 0.08–0.3 and an extremely long wear lifetime. In addition, wear tracks of the DLC coatings as well as wear scars of the sliding A1 2 O 3 balls were investigated with the help of optical microscopy and scanning electron microscopy studies. Tribological studies of the DLC coatings with other ball wear materials were also carried out. The results indicate that the studied DLC coatings posses dramatically improved wear protection properties as compared to e.g. high-quality TiN or TiC coatings. The coatings were analysed using X-ray diffraction, infrared spectroscopy, Rutherford backscattering spectrometry and elastic recoil detection.
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