Effect of Negative Substrate Bias Voltage on the Microstructure and Mechanical Properties of Nanostructured Ti-Al-N-O Coatings Prepared by Cathodic Arc Evaporation

Ternary Ti-X-N coatings, where X = Al, Si, Cr, O, etc., have been widely used for machining tools and cutting tools such as inserts, end-mills, and etc. Ti-Al-N-O coatings were deposited onto silicon wafer and WC-Co substrates by a cathodic arc evaporation (CAE) technique at various negative substrate bias voltages. In this study, the influence of substrate bias voltages during deposition on the microstructure and mechanical properties of Ti-Al-N-O coatings were systematically investigated to optimize the CAE deposition condition. Based on results from various analyses, the Ti-Al-N-O coatings prepared at substrate bias voltage of -80 V in the process exhibited excellent mechanical properties with a higher compressive residual stress. The Ti-Al-N-O (-80 V) coating exhibited the highest hardness around 30 GPa and elastic modulus around 303 GPa. The improvement of mechanical properties with optimized bias voltage of -80 V can be explained with the diminution of macroparticles, film densification and residual stress induced by ion bombardment effect. However, the increasing bias voltage above -80 V caused reduction in film deposition rate in the Ti-Al-N-O coatings due to re-sputtering and ion bombardment phenomenon.