A. Miletic, Y. Chatenet, E. Bousser, L.B. Varela, K. Tsoutas, J.E. Klemberg-Sapieha, L. Martinu

Department of Engineering Physics, Polytechnique Montreal,
Montreal, Quebec, Canada

In this work, effect of residual stress magnitude and gradients on evolution of tribological properties of cathodic arc deposited TiAlN coatings was studied. To achieve different stress levels coatings were produced with substrate bias voltages ranging from 0 V to 100 V. XRD stress measurements showed that stresses are compressive in all coatings, that they have a general increasing trend with the bias voltage, and that the magnitude of compressive stress reduces from coating surface towards the coating/substrate interface. Room temperature sliding tests performed in ambient air showed a complex wear behavior. On one side, higher wear resistance was generally found for coatings with lower average stresses. On the other side, wear rate was constantly increasing with the travelled length for all coatings, i.e., an indirect correlation between the wear rate and residual stress was found. Mechanical properties and surface morphology also played an important role in the wear performance of studied coatings and are addressed in this work.