TiCxNy coatings deposited on high-speed steel substrates have been used to enhance the tribological properties of cutting tools (hardness, wear resistance, etc.) as well as their corrosion resistance in an aggressive environment. These layers are usually produced by plasma deposition techniques (PVD or CVD), and different coating properties can be obtained with each method. In this work, TiCxNy films were deposited on AISI M2 high-speed steel substrates by the reactive magnetron sputtering technique. A series of samples with a variety of reactive gas mixtures (nitrogen and methane), substrate biases, and deposition temperatures was produced. As a result, coatings with different chemical compositions were deposited for each group of deposition parameters. Gas mixture composition and substrate bias directly affected the chemical composition of the coating, while deposition temperature influenced the chemical composition of TiCxNy layers to a very low extent.
Hard thin films; chemical composition; electrochemical behavior; deposition parameters
