Mechanical and Tribological Behaviors of Nanocomposite Titanium Nitrides Coatings

TiN coatings with a thickness of 2 μm were deposited using the magnetron sputtering has developed rapidly over the last decade in such a way that it has become an established process of choice for the deposition of a wide range in various applications for different domains as it gives excellent performance in many aspects. In view of this, we have deposited the TiN coatings by magnetron sputtering using Ti target at different nitrogen content to study the influence of the nitrogen content on the mechanical properties and tribological behaviors of the TiN coatings were systematically investigated using nanoindentation and a pin-on-disk tribometer. Nanoindentation results shows that the hardness and Young's modulus of the TiN coatings increase with increasing N content in the coatings.Wear test results indicate that the wear rate and friction coefficient of the XC100 steel substrate were significantly reduced by deposition of the TiN coatings, and the tribological behaviors of the TiN coatings are strongly dependent on the nitrogen content in the coatings.