Effects of substrate temperature on the structure and mechanical properties of (TiVCrZrHf)N coatings

► The decrease of N content of (TiVCrZrHf)N obtained at elevated substrate temperature may be due to its higher desorption rate from the film surface at higher substrate temperature ► The TiVCr coatings have a two layer structure with amorphous and face-centered cubic (fcc) crystal phases, which resulted from lattice distortion of multiprincipal elements and mismatch in the lattice between (TiVCrZrHf)N and substrate. ► The maximum hardness of 48.13 GPa in the as-deposited state of the present films is the highest among all the high entropy alloy coatings. This demonstrates that the present alloy design is effective in achieving even high hardness and could be a new route to develop nanocomposite or multilayer design.