Abstract
Due to the increased demands for drilling and cutting tools working at extreme machining conditions, protective coatings are extensively utilized to prolong the tool life and eliminate the need for lubricants. The present work reports on the effect of a second MeN (Me = Zr, Cr, Mo, Nb) layer in WN-based nanocomposite multilayers on microstructure, phase composition, and mechanical and tribological properties. The WN/MoN multilayers have not been studied yet, and cathodic-arc physical vapor deposition (CA-PVD) has been used to fabricate studied coating systems for the first time. Moreover, first-principles calculations were performed to gain more insight into the properties of deposited multilayers. Two types of coating microstructure with different kinds of lattices were observed: (i) face-centered cubic (fcc) on fcc-W2N (WN/CrN and WN/ZrN) and (ii) a combination of hexagonal and fcc on fcc-W2N (WN/MoN and WN/NbN). Among the four studied systems, the WN/NbN had superior properties: the lowest specific wear rate (1.7 × 10−6 mm3/Nm) and high hardness (36 GPa) and plasticity index H/E (0.93). Low surface roughness, high elastic strain to failure, Nb2O5 and WO3 tribofilms forming during sliding, ductile behavior of NbN, and nanocomposite structure contributed to high tribological performance. The results indicated the suitability of WN/NbN as a protective coating operating in challenging conditions.
Highlights
Transition metal nitrides have become an essential part of manufacturing technologies.Due to the increased demands for drilling and cutting tools operating at extreme machining temperatures and rates, protective coatings are extensively utilized to prolong the useful tool life and eliminate the need for lubricants
Among the five pure metal cathodes used for coating synthesis, Zr, Nb, and W produce ions with close energy values
The nanocomposite WN/MeN (Me = Cr, Zr, Mo, Nb) multilayer coatings deposited by cathodic-arc physical vapor deposition (CA-PVD) have been comprehensively investigated
Summary
Due to the increased demands for drilling and cutting tools operating at extreme machining temperatures and rates, protective coatings are extensively utilized to prolong the useful tool life and eliminate the need for lubricants. They decrease the environmental hazards and increase the quality of fabricated tools, reducing maintenance costs. Numerous studies have demonstrated that alternating deposition of binary nitride layers produces multilayer coatings with superior properties, i.e., TiN/ZrN, TiN/CrN, CrN/ZrN, MoN/CrN, and TiN/MoN [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]. It can effectively hinder crack propagation due to the numerous interfaces between layers and grain boundaries [9,10]
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