Influence of Substrate Temperature on the TiC Thin Films Prepared by Unbalanced Magnetron Sputtering Method

In this work, we have fabricated TiC films by using unbalanced magnetron sputtering method with graphite and Ti targets for contact strip application of electric railway. TiC films were deposited with various substrate temperatures. We investigated various properties of TiC films prepared with various substrate temperatures, such as the hardness, surface roughness, friction coefficient, resistivity, FESEM (Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscopy), HRTEM (High Resolution Transmission Electron Microscopy) and XPS (X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy). The hardness and friction coefficient properties of TiC films were improved with increasing substrate temperature. These results indicate that the improvement of hardness and resistivity is related to the increase of sp2 clusters in TiC films. And also, the resistivity value of TiC films were decreased with increasing substrate temperature.