AVS 51st International Symposium
    Thin Films Monday Sessions
       Session TF-MoP

Paper TF-MoP19
Observation of Plastic Deformation in TIALCN/A-C Ceramic Nanocomposite Coating

Monday, November 15, 2004, 5:00 pm, Room Exhibit Hall B

Session: Poster Session
Presenter: J. Shieh, National Nano Device Laboratory, Taiwan
Authors: J. Shieh, National Nano Device Laboratory, Taiwan
M.-H. Hon, National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan
Correspondent: Click to Email
Titanium aluminum nitride, a metastable refractory ceramic coating, is widely used for improving tribological properties of cutting tools due to the excellent hardness and oxidation resistance.@footnote 1@ However, brittleness is a great handicap for ceramics in their technological applications since dislocations cannot move rapidly to allow for plastic deformation. Thus we added amorphous carbon into the grain boundary of nanograins to improve the coating plasticity. Extensive plastic deformation of titanium aluminum carbonitride/amorphous nanocomposite coating at room temperature was observed in this study. Nanoindentation measurement showed that the coating hardness was 24.4 GPa with the plasticity of 57.6 percent. The critical load of 1.3 µm coating in scratch test was beyond 100 N. The depth of the 100 N scratch track identified by microstylus profilometer was 6.7 µm, while the thickness of the coating in the center of the scratch track observed by scanning electron microscopy was 0.4 µm, which is only about one third of that for the as-deposited coating. The amorphous carbon with sp@super 2@ hybrid and @pi@-bonding is proposed to account for this unique plasticity. @FootnoteText@ @footnote 1@ S. PalDey and S.C. Deevi, Mat. Sci. Eng. A 342, 58 (2003).