Mechanical and Tribological Properties of Metal Incorporated DLC Thin Film

Abstract

Diamond-like carbon (DLC) thin films have many advantages like high wear resistance and hardness, low surface roughness, low friction coefficient, optical transparency, and chemical inertness. Due to these excellent properties, DLC thin films are used for an array of applications like lubricating layers on sliding parts, protective layers on magnetic media, and coating on biomedical implants, as antireflective coating. The main limitation of DLC thin film is its high internal stresses which often lead to a weaker adhesion to the substrates. This limitation can be overcome by the incorporation of different metals and semiconductors into the DLC film. Nowadays, a lot of research is going on the metal incorporated DLC films. The presented work is a summary of the mechanical and tribological properties of different metal incorporate DLC thin films.