The combination of 'gold plating' and high wear resistance of PVD

摘要

Decorative hard coatings have to meet variety of requirements such us attractive colors and high wear resistance. For luxury consumer goods such us watch components, writing instruments or spectacles, some manufacturers want to maintain both thehigh wear resistance of PVD and the "gold plated" label which provides the product with a "high quality" image. So a 3 to 5μm layer of gold plating must therefore be deposit onto a (TiN + Au) PVD layer. This multi-layer method creates a high level ofinternal stresses leading to adhesion defects. A complete process has to be set up in order to reduce the internal stresses leading to adhesion defects.