Influence of the silicon and oxygen content on the properties of non-hydrogenated amorphous carbon coatings

摘要

This work reports the development of non-hydrogenated magnetron-sputtered silicon and silicon-oxygen containing amorphous carbon coatings with increasing silicon and oxygen contents respectively. The Si content of a-C:Si coatings increases linearly with the increase of the power applied to the Si target up to 24 at.%, while to the system a-C:Si:O the O content increases with the increase of the oxygen flow to a maximum of 27 at.%. The hardness of the a-C:Si coatings shows two distinct trends with the increase of the Si content, a decrease of hardness for Si contents lower than 10 at.% and an increment above this value are observed. The coatings of the system a-C:Si:O present a decrease of hardness and Young modulus with the increase of the O content. The tribological performance of the coatings is significantly improved by doping the amorphous carbon coatings with silicon and oxygen with a reduction of the friction from 0.17 for the undoped carbon coating to 0.034 for the coating of the system a-C:Si:O with the highest O content. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.