Effect of the plasma deposition parameters on the properties of TixCy for hard coatings applications

Titanium carbide coatings are potentially important in engineering applications and are widely used as protective coatings because of their unique properties. The extreme hardness, abrasive resistance, high temperature strength and corrosion resistance, make this material very useful for coating tools, bearing surface and various kinds of machine parts, exposed to corrosive atmospheres or operating at high temperatures. In this paper, particular attention is given to the TiC coatings prepared using an RF sputtering system at low pressure and samples hardness were particularly studied as a function of different parameters (gas mixture, thickness) of the deposition process.