Influence of substrate pre-treatments by Xe+ ion bombardment and plasma nitriding on the behavior of TiN coatings deposited by plasma reactive sputtering on 100Cr6 steel

In this paper the influence of pre-treating a 100Cr6 steel surface by Xe+ ion bombardment and plasma nitriding at low temperature (380 °C) on the roughness, wear resistance and residual stresses of thin TiN coatings deposited by reactive IBAD was investigated. The Xe+ ion bombardment was carried out using a 1.0 keV kinetic energy by a broad ion beam assistance deposition (IBAD, Kaufman cell). The results showed that in the studied experimental conditions the ion bombardment intensifies nitrogen diffusion by creating lattice imperfections, stress, and increasing roughness. In case of the combined pre-treatment with Xe+ ion bombardment and subsequent plasma nitriding, the samples evolved relatively high average roughness and the wear volume increased in comparison to the substrates exposed to only nitriding or ion bombardment.