Abstract
ZrN and TiN thin films were deposited on Si (100) and AISI 304 stainless steel substrates using hollow cathode discharge ion-plating (HCD-IP) and unbalanced magnetron (UBM) sputtering methods. The purposes of present study were to verify the feasibility and reliability of the application of design of experiment (DOE) method on PVD processes, and to investigate the mechanical properties and corrosion resistance TiN and ZrN thin films deposited by single-variable HCD-IP process. The feasibility and reliability of DOE method applying on HCD-IP and UBM system are successfully verified in present study. The results showed that (111) orientation was the dominant preferred orientation in ZrN films. At optimum condition, the ZrN film showed the lowest resistivity of 56 □□-cm, the highest packing factor of 0.99, the lowest roughness of 0.66 nm, the highest brilliance of 87.2, and a relatively high hardness of 30.63 GPa. The resistivity decreases linearly with increasing packing factor. The brilliance increases linearly with increasing packing factor. The bi-layer ZrN/Zr coating exhibits the highest corrosion resistance compared to the other two single layer coatings. The corrosion power Q is an effective index to evaluate the corrosion resistance of film-coated specimens. Furthermore the corrosion power Q increases with increasing NIcrit. After heat treatment, the microstructure and packing factor inside the TiN thin films are not significantly changed; however, the surface grain size is enlarged and surface roughness decreases. The effect of heat treatment on the variation of texture coefficient is more distinct at 700□C than 400□C. The heat-treated specimens have 10 to 30% higher hardness than the as-deposited specimen with corresponding thickness, and 400□C-process produces specimens have slightly higher hardness than 700□C-process.