Mechanical and tribological properties of coatings sputtered from SiC target in the presence of CH4 gas

► Sputtering of SiC and Si target in gas mixture of Ar andCH4 is compared. ► Increase of carbon from 50 to 70 at.% leads to decrease of hardness and modulus. ► Small addition of CH4 results in decrease of friction for films from the SiC target. ► SiC sputtering allows to get a-SiC films with high hardness and low friction. ► Films with C/Si > 1 posses hardness of 18 GPa and friction coefficient of ~ 0.15.