Method for controlled production of diffusion based coatings by vacuum cathodic arc systems

摘要

The present invention relates to a novel method for coating of a substrate in a vacuum chamber having a consumable conductive target material and a substrate to be treated. The method comprises applying an AC or bipolar pulsed DC bias to the said substrate during coating step to establish cycles of positive and negative bias voltages. Thereby, the substrate is heated with electron bombardment in positive bias states and ion treated in negative bias states in situ. This in situ heating allows to produce simplified and accelerated diffusion based coatings.