Influence of substrate material and its plasma pretreatment on adhesion and properties of WC/a-C:H nanocomposite coatings deposited at low temperature

WC/a-C:H tribological nanocomposite coatings were deposited by reactive magnetron sputtering of tungsten carbide targets in acetylene atmosphere on substrates of various materials - cemented carbide and three types of steel. All the substrates were pretreated by various magnetron plasma-based techniques to evaluate their efficiency in promotion of coating adhesion. All the studied processes took place at temperatures lower than 180 °C. The structure of the WC/a-C:H coatings and their mechanical properties did not depend on the pretreatment technique nor the type of substrate material. On the other hand, the surface roughness of the substrate and the deposited coating can be affected by the intensity and duration of the pretreatment process. The adhesion of the coatings is significantly dependent on the substrate material and the particular plasma pretreatment process, as well as their combination. HiPIMS pretreatment processes with lower duty cycle at higher substrate bias voltage result in excellent adhesion with scratch critical load values higher than 130 N. Further, the substrate-target distance influences the efficiency of the pretreatment process and also partly affects the performance of the coatings. It is concluded that magnetron plasma-based pretreatment and deposition processes might involve potential practical problems in industrial coating of various objects in the same process batch. This is particularly connected with their shape and their composition.