Deposition of CVD-TiCN and TiAlN coatings guided with thermodynamic calculations

Abstract The chemical vapor deposition (CVD) of TiCN and TiAlN coatings was investigated through thermodynamics calculations and key experiments. Based on the established CVD phase diagrams, TiCN coating was prepared by the low-pressure CVD method. It was found that the measured atomic fractions of C, N and Ti in the TiCN coating agree reasonably with the calculation results. For the TiAlN coating, CVD phase diagrams suggest that the deposition temperature and the ratio of AlCl3 to NH3 could remarkably affect the Al content in the coating. The present work leads to a better agreement with the experimental data than the previous calculations for Al content in the TiAlN coating. It is expected that the current work is of interest for further experimental investigations on CVD hard coatings.