Multi-scale wear of a boride coating on tungsten

In this work, wear mechanisms of boride coating on pure tungsten using a pin-on-disk tribometer were investigated. The surface analysis after wear tests was conducted using an atomic force microscope (AFM). Research results showed that the boride coating underwent different types of wear modes: abrasion within a length scale from micrometer to millimeter and fracture within a few nanometers. Tungsten showed wear through plastic deformation and adhesion. These mixed wear modes could only be seen under the atomic force microscope.