General properties and scratch adhesion characterization of carbon-containing tungsten films

Tungsten-carbon hard coatings are widely used as protective coatings that a re resistant to wear and erosion but exhibit some mechanical deficiencies d ue to their brittleness. In this paper, basic properties and adhesion of pu re tungsten films and carbon-containing tungsten films are investigated. Th e result of this investigation should contribute to optimize the architectu re of multilayered coatings based on the arrangement of ductile W layers an d harder tungsten-carbon layers, for mechanical applications. (C) 1999 Else vier Science S.A. All rights reserved.