Microstructure, residual stress and hardness study of nanocrystalline titanium–zirconium nitride thin films

The pulsed cathodic arc deposition technique was used to synthesize titanium–zirconium nitride (TiZrN) thin films at different substrate temperatures. A microstructural analysis extracted from the X-ray powder diffraction pattern was performed to identify the dependence of crystallite size and microstrain on TS. The residual stress state was also determined with the X-ray powder diffraction pattern assuming that the material behaved isotropically based on Young׳s modulus and the Poisson coefficient. The morphological analysis used atomic force microscopy to determine the grain size evolution with substrate temperature during deposition. The nanohardness values were obtained using nanoindentation measurements. Finally, the synthesis–property relationships were obtained with the microstructural information.