A nanoindentation study of magnetron co-sputtered nanocrystalline ternary nitride coatings

Abstract

Nanoindentation testing was used to determine the hardness, elastic modulus and plasticity parameter of three newly developed ternary nitride coatings with nano-sized grains. With decreasing nitrogen deposition pressure, grain diameter of the coatings decreases that leads to both higher nanohardness and elastic modulus with conservation of satisfactory values of plasticity characteristic.

Keywords

• nanocrystalline materials
• thin films
• sputtering
• nanoindentation