Energy-efficient physical vapor deposition of dense and hard Ti-Al-W-N coatings deposited under industrial conditions

Abstract

Decreasing the growth temperature to lower energy consumption and enable deposition on temperature-sensitive substrates during thin film growth by magnetron sputtering is crucial for sustainable development. High-mass metal ion irradiation of the growing film surface with ion energy controlled by metal-ion-synchronized biasing, allows to replace conventionally-used resistive heating, as was recently demonstrated in experiments involving a hybrid high-power impulse and dc magnetron co-sputtering (HiPIMS/DCMS) setup and stationary substrates. Here, we report the extension of the method to industrial scale conditions. As a model-case towards understanding the role of one-fold substrate rotation on Ti0.50Al0.50N film growth employing W+ irradiation, we investigate the effect of two parameters: W ion energy (controlled in the range 45 ≤ EW+ ≤ 630 eV by the amplitude of synchronized substrate bias voltage) and W ion dose per deposited metal atom (determined by the target power). We show that the efficient densification of coatings grown without external heating can be achieved by minimizing the thickness of DCMS-deposited Ti0.50Al0.50N layer that is exposed to an W+ ion flux, or by increasing EW+ at a given Ti0.50Al0.50N thickness.

Keywords

• PVD
• Energy-efficient
• Industrial
• Densification
• Ion-irradiation