Abstract
Abstract Carbide materials offer extremely high hardness, but have experienced limited application due to high brittleness. Thin films of carbides have potential for wear coatings if their adhesion to engineering material substrates, toughness, and durability can be increased. Additions of metals to ceramics is a well known method for increasing toughness, as demonstrated by the class of ceramic/metal (cermet) bulk materials. Using the same approach employed in the cermet industry, B 4 C and Mo coatings were fabricated using a co-sputtering technique. As-deposited coatings exhibited either a fine-grained or amorphous structure. In general, adhesion of the B 4 C and Mo co-sputtered films to bearing steel substrates was good, with scratch adhesion values of >50 N routinely measured. Knoop hardness values of over 5000 were measured at light loads, for a thicker, high Mo (49 a/o) containing B 4 C coating. Significant improvement in coating-substrate interfacial toughness (determined from indentation) was observed by the addition of Mo to B 4 C. Application of bias during co-sputtering further improved the toughness of a high Mo (49 a/o) content film, and changed the cracking mode, during identation, from a radial to a circumferential orientation.
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