THE TRIBOLOGICAL POTENTIAL OF CRN AND CR(C,N) DEPOSITED BY MULTI-ARC PVD PROCESS

Ceramic coatings have been proven to be a good choice for preventing t he base material from wear, corrosion, erosion and other unfavourable damage. In the field of thin solid films (< 10 mu m), titanium nitride (TiN) is still the most widely accepted in engineering applications. Over the last years, chromium-base (Cr-base) coated tools have come on to the market. Consequently, deeper knowledge of Cr-base coatings is i ndeed required. Therefore, we conducted a series of experiments to ass ess the potential of chromium nitride (CrN) and chromium carbonitride (Cr(C,N)) coatings. For comparison, TiN was also studied under identic al conditions. The results showed that the surface micro-hardness of 1 0 mu m CrN was the highest and the tribological performance of CrN and Cr(C,N) was excellent. Thus, CrN is expected to have potential to rep lace TiN in terms of wear resistance. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science S.A.