Efficiency Method to Study the Metal Composition for Hard Materials

It has been progressed to study the effect of the metal composition on the mechanical properties of the hard coating synthesized by the PVD method. In traditional method the film with one metal composition is generally deposited by the alloy cathode with the corresponding metal composition in one running, and thereafter investigated on the mechanical properties. On the other hand, a new efficient method, said as the combinatorial method, was suggested for studying the effect of the metal composition on the film characteristics. In this method, the film with various compositions can be obtained at once in one running. In the present report, the effect of the metal composition on the film hardness and the change of the crystal structure were studied in the Ti-Al-N film prepared by the combinatorial method. In combinatorial method, it was found that the film hardness was rapidly decreased with the deposition of the B4 type crystal. This showed the excellent agreement with the result obtained in the traditional method and the propriety of this combinatorial method was proved in the range of the study about the mechanical property of Ti-Al-N film synthesized by the unbalanced magnetron sputtering.