Wear protection layer

Wear-protection layer consisting of a plurality of on a substrate alternately one above the other in the applied periodically repeated sequence of first and second single layers which contain at least one hard material phase. Object is to provide a wear protection layer, which is characterized among other things by a high wear resistance on the one hand and a low coefficient of friction on the other. The object is solved by the single layers contain an amorphous carbon phase which serves as a matrix or a particle boundary phase for the hard material phases, the first single layer has a carbon phase component of over 50 mol% carbon, the second single layer has a hard material phase component of over 50 mole % comprising the hard material and the hard material phase component is nanocrystalline.