Investigation of processing parameters for pulsed closed field unbalanced magnetron sputtered titanium carbide thin films

摘要

Titanium carbide is a well established wear resistant coating owing to its excellent tribological properties including high hardness and elastic modulus, good wear resistance, low coefficient of friction against steel and high temperature stability. Recent advances in sputtering technology have resulted in improvements in the properties and performance of wear resistant coatings. Closed field unbalanced magnetron sputtering and pulsed magnetron sputtering have greatly improved the structure and properties of titanium carbide films by increasing ion bombardment at the substrate. However, film quality is highly dependent on the placement of the substrate relative to the sputtering targets. Titanium carbide films were deposited using a cosputtering configuration from one graphite target and one titanium target. At short substrate to target distances films exhibited an open, porous structure with low hardness and a high coefficient of friction. As the substrate to target distance was increased, along with the angle of incident particles, improvements were seen in both the microstructure and tribological properties.