Influence of Deposition Temperature on Microstructures and Mechanical Properties of Magnetron Sputtered V-Al-Si-N Coatings

The V-Al-Si-N coatings were deposited by RF reactive magnetron sputtering on substrates of Si(100) and WC-Co Alloy. The influence of the deposition temperature on the microstructures and mechanical properties of the coatings were investigated with X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy and nano-indentation, and tribometer. The results show that the deposition temperature strongly affects the crystallinity and mechanical behavior. For example, grown at room temperature, high defect density and large residual stress were observed in the coatings; at 300℃, fairly long columnar grains stand vertically in the porous coating; at 500℃,(200)preferentially oriented, smaller grains formed in the compact coatings with a hardness of 29.7 GPa and a wear-rate of 6.1*10~(-17) m~3 order of magnitude lower than that of the coatings grown at RT. Besides, the temperature increase resulted in a significant improvement of tribological property and a slight decrease of hardness.