STUDIES ON THE SYNTHESIS OF HARD COATINGS BY PLASMA-ASSISTED CVD USING METALLOORGANIC COMPOUNDS

In this paper, the use of several metallo-organic compounds as precurs ors in a d.c, pulsed plasma-assisted CVD process is presented. One of the objectives of the work was to lower the coating temperature for th e deposition of hard coatings on temperature-sensitive substrates. The layers being deposited were Ti(C,N), Zr(C,N) and Zr(B,C,N). The layer s were deposited on hard metals, hardened steel and hardened aluminium alloys. The layers have been studied by scanning electron microscopy, wavelength-dispersive X-ray analysis, X-ray diffraction and ESCA. It is shown that hard and adhesive coatings can be obtained at low coatin g temperatures of about 150 degrees C.