• Baumbach, T.
• Krause, Bärbel
• Doyle, S.
• Kaufholz, M.
• Kotapati, S.
• Stüber, M.
• Ulrich, S.
• Mantilla, M.

Abstract

In situ study of texture development during the growth of magnetron sputtered VC1-x thin films.Resume : Transition metal carbides play a major role in the area of hard coatings and tribologicalapplications. In order to obtain the desired properties such as hardness and wear resistance, it isnecessary to understand the microstructure formation processes on the atomic and microscopicscale. In situ x-ray diffraction experiments during thin film deposition are a very useful tool tounderstand the interplay between the microstructure and macroscopic coating properties. The aimof this study is to develop a model for the microstructure formation of hard coatings as a function ofdifferent process parameters such as substrate temperature and bias. For this, several vanadiumcarbide (VC1-x) thin films were deposited at various substrate temperatures (RT-450°C) using DCmagnetron sputtering. The powder rings observed during deposition reveal that below a transitiontemperature (~250°C), a mixture of [111] and [200] textures dominates, while a preferred [111]orientation is found for temperatures above 250°C. A strong [111] texture is observed at highertemperatures (~450°C). The real time measurements also show that there are textural andmicrostructural changes as a function of deposition time. Strain, stress and crystallite size as afunction of substrate temperature were studied as well. AFM was used as a complementary methodto analyse the surface morphological changes. The measurements reveal that roughness increaseswith temperature and sample thickness.

Topics

• Deposition
• impedance spectroscopy
• microstructure
• surface
• x-ray diffraction
• experiment
• thin film
• atomic force microscopy
• wear resistance
• carbide
• hardness
• texture