Fabrication and characterization of nanolayered single element nitride coating

Tantalum nitride (TaN) and Hafnium nitride (HfN) coatings were deposited through magnetron sputtering at various Ar/N2 inlet gas ratios and RF input power control, respectively. The nitrogen contents of the single layer nitride coatings decreased with the Ar/N2 ratio and increased with the input powers. TaN coating could be fabricated with crystalline structure, c-TaN, with a preferred orientation (200), while the amorphous feature TaN, a-TaN, was deposited with low Ar/N2 ratio and excess N content. For HfN, the similar HfN crystalline features with a preferred orientation (111) were observed for all conditions. The c-TaN and a-TaN layers were alternately stacked into nano-multilayer. The HfN multilayer was deposited with layers generated at 150 and 125 W. The c-TaN film exhibited superior mechanical strength, whereas the a-TaN coating had a better corrosion resistance. Combining crystalline and amorphous TaN layers to form a multilayer improved the mechanical behavior. The HfN films, both in single-layer and multi-layer form, exhibited columnar structure feature under various sputtering input powers. Although the multilayer feature for HfN coating by various power input modulation did not exhibit significant improvement for hardness, the scratch resistance was elevated.