Cr-CrN AND CrN-TiC MULTILAYER COATINGS MANUFACTURED BY MEANS OF VACUUM ARC METHOD

The issue of this paper is the testing of properties of multilayer coatings composed on the basis of chromium nitride, multilayer Cr-CrN coating and multilayer CrN-TiC coating manufactured by means of the arc-vacuum method on 4H13 steel foundation. The multilayer structure of the obtained coatings has been determined by means of scanning microscopy and spectral analysis of the chemical composition change in the depth function (GDOES). Besides, their hardness and Young module has been measured (NanoHardnessTester) and the adhesion has been tested by means of scratch-test (REVETEST). In the scratchtests the load values of the intender determining the moment of cracks initiation and cohesion failure were determined. They define the moment of adhesion failures initiation and determine the moment of complete coating’s removal from the foundation surface in the scratch area. Thanks to the testing, it was possible to define the influence of the multilayer structure on the mechanical properties of manufactured multilayer compositions and the mechanism of their devastation in the scratch test.