Improving the Deposition Rate of Multicomponent Coating by Controlling Substrate Table Rotation in a Magnetron Sputtering Process

Abstract

Physical Vapour Deposition (PVD) technology, particularly magnetron sputtering process, enjoys the competitive advantages of depositing different new generation coatings (e.g., multicomponent, multilayer, graded, composite etc.) on three-dimensional objects (substrate) with excellent mechanical and tribological properties. In an industrial-scale sputtering chamber with a limited number of active magnetron sources (target) on the chamber wall, the density of coating species from different sources would not be uniform everywhere around the chamber. As a result, at a constant speed of rotating substrate table in a single revolution, the instantaneous deposition rate will be highest in front of the active targets and lowest when the substrate moves away from the active targets. In this work, a method of controlling the rotational speed (i.e., slower speed in front of active targets and faster speed in front of inactive targets in a revolution) of a substrate table installed in a magnetron sputtering chamber has been developed in order to improve the deposition rate of a multicomponent TiN+MoSx coating. The mechanical and tribological properties of TiN+MoSx coating have also been characterised to assess the beneficial effects of adding solid lubricant (MoS2) in hard TiN coating.