Mechanical and Corrosion Resistance of (Ti,Cr)N Grown by DC Magnetron Sputter on H13 Tool Steel

Abstract This research studied properties of (Ti,Cr)N film prepared by co-deposition from dual unbalanced DC magnetron sputtering techniques at various temperatures. All samples were prepared at different growth temperatures for (Ti,Cr)N compound layer with atomic ratio Ti: Cr approximately 1: 1. The lattice parameter of the film is 4.18 Å, which is a value between those of TiN and CrN. It was found that both hardness and adhesion increased with an increase of growth temperature. The highest hardness value obtained is 24.78 GPa for film growth at 190 °C and film adhesion was significantly improved by increasing growth temperature. The growth temperature also plays an important role on corrosion resistance. E corr increases from −466 mV to −195 mV, while I corr decreases from 188.21 nA/cm 2 to 3.20 nA/cm 2 with increasing the growth temperature to 190 °C. At highest growth temperature surface roughness decrease. The improved properties, both mechanical and corrosion properties, as well as surface uniformity are due to the change of film structure from columnar to equiaxial, which produces a denser film.