Reactive sputtering of nanostructured multilayer coatings and their tribological properties

Abstract The present study describes and reports on reactive sputtering of nanostructured multilayer coatings. A 3 μm coating for instance may contain up to a few thousand bilayers of two different film materials, and in order to achieve this, a substrate holder rotates through two different sputtering zones in an Alcatel SC 650 sputtering equipment with metal and carbon cathodes operating concurrently in the so-called side-by-side configuration. In reactive sputtering of nitrides, reactive nitrogen was controlled very accurately in order to establish controllable points on a total sputtering pressure versus nitrogen flow curve. Nanostructured multilayer coatings of the type MeN/C–N were de…