Structure and Tribological Property of TiBN Nanocomposite Multilayer Synthesized by Ti-BN Composite Cathode Plasma Immersion Ion Implantation and Deposition**Supported by the Fund of National Key Laboratory of High Power Microwave Technology under Grant No 2014-763.xy.k, the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No 21573054, and the Joint Funds Key Project of the National Natural Science Foundation of China

Abstract

A Ti-BN complex cathode is made from Ti and h-BN powders by the powder metallurgy technology, and TiBN coating is obtained by plasma immersion ion implantation and deposition with this Ti-BN composite cathode. The TiBN coating shows a self-forming multilayered nanocomposite structure while with relative uniform elemental distributions. High resolution transmission electron microscopy images reveal that the multilayered structure is derived from different grain sizes in the nanocomposite. Due to the existence of h-BN phase, the friction coefficient of the coating is about 0.25.