Comparative study of microstructure and mechanical properties for films with various deposition rate by magnetron sputtering

This paper investigated the effect of the film deposition rate for $CrN_x$ microstructure and mechanical properties. For these purpose, pure Cr an stoichiometric CrN films were deposited with various target power density on Si hardened M2 tool steel. The variation of ni trogen concentration in $CrN_x$ f analyzed by AES and deposition rate was calculated by measuring of thickness using ${\alpha}-step$ profilometer. The microstructure was analyzed by X-Ray Diffract and Scanning Electron Microscopy(SEM), and mechanical properties were evalua residual stress, microhardness and adhesion tests. Deposition rate of Cr and CrN increased as an almost linear function of target power density from $0.25\mu\textrm{m}/min$ and $0.15\mu\textrm{m}/min$ to $0.43\mu\textrm{m}/min$. Residual stresses of Cr and CrN films were from tensi Ie to compressive stress with an increase of deposi tion rate a compressive stresses were increased as more augmentation of deposition r maximum hardness value of $2300kg/\textrm{mm}^2$ and the best adhesion strength correspond HF 1 were obtained for CrN film synthesized at the highest target densitY($13.2W/\textrm{mm}^2$) owing to high residual compressive stress and increasing mobility.