Linköping University Post Print Industrial-scale deposition of highly adherent CN x films on steel substrates

Abstract Highly adherent carbon nitride (CN x ) films were deposited using a novel pretreatment with two high power impulse magnetron sputtering (HIPIMS) power supplies in a master-slave configuration: one to establish the discharge and one to produce a pulsed substrate bias. During the pretreatment, SKF3 (AISI 52100) steel substrates were pulse-biased in the environment of a HIPIMS Cr plasma in order to sputter clean the surface and to implant Cr metal ions. Subsequently, CN x films were prepared at room temperature by DC unbalanced magnetron sputtering from a high purity graphite target in a N 2 /Ar discharge at 3 mTorr. All processing was done in an industrial CemeCon CC800 system. A series of depositions were obtained with samples at different bias voltages (DC and pulsed) in the range 0-800 V. Scanning transmission microscopy (STEM) and high resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) show the formation of an interface comprising a polycrystalline Cr layer of 100 nm and an amorphous transition layer of 5 nm. The adhesion of CN