Invited Paper SE-MoM3
Nanostructured PVD Hard Coatings in Industrial Research and Application

Monday, October 15, 2007, 8:40 am, Room 617

The improvement of the overall coating performance of wear protecting PVD coatings concentrates to achieve lower friction values, better thermal stability , optimization of hardness and toughness and higher oxidation stability. The aim of these improvements is to get a higher performance of tools and parts of components. Nowadays composite materials having structures in the nanometre dimensions are in the scope of industrial applications. Different coating architectures were developed in industrial scale: isotropic composites coatings, gradient nano composite coatings and nano multilayer coatings. Modern industrial PVD systems are designed to deposit these types of sophisticated coating architectures. Both arc evaporation and magnetron sputtering and its combinations are suitable to create nano structures. The coating processes to deposit nano structured coatings will be discussed in more detail and it will be shown that the analytical methods for coating development and production control have to be shifted toward a nanostructure compatible level.