Structure, mechanical and tribological properties of hard yet tough W-B-C coatings as a function of their chemical composition

In this contribution, we report on the preparation of W-B-C coatings by pulsed DC. W-B-C system was chosen as the crystalline W2BC phase should exhibit the best mechanical properties out of the systems studied by ab-initio calculations. However, this comes at the cost of phase stability of the W2BC phase presenting an obstacle for the deposition of the theoretically predicted phase. The existence of different crystalline and amorphous phases depending on the coating composition will be shown and the correlation of the mechanical properties, the structure, and the coating chemistry will be presented.