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Advances and problems with TEM characterization of Cr/CrN multilayer coatings
Author(s) -
MORGIEL J.,
MAJOR L.,
MAJOR B.,
LACKNER J. M.,
NISTOR L.
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
journal of microscopy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.569
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1365-2818
pISSN - 0022-2720
DOI - 10.1111/j.1365-2818.2006.01629.x
Subject(s) - microstructure , materials science , amorphous solid , layer (electronics) , deposition (geology) , nitride , chromium nitride , thin film , pulsed laser deposition , transmission electron microscopy , chromium , analytical chemistry (journal) , laser ablation , composite material , metallurgy , nanotechnology , laser , crystallography , optics , chemistry , paleontology , chromatography , sediment , biology , physics
Summary Multilayer Cr/CrN/Cr/Cr(N,C) and Cr/CrN with 8 and 32 layer coatings were deposited on austenite substrates using pulsed laser deposition (PLD) technique. The microstructure observations were performed using Philips CM20™, TECNAI G 2 F20 – TWIN™ and JEOL EX4000™ transmission microscopes. The performed experiments indicated that lowering the argon flow from 60 to 30 cm 3 /s during chromium ablation changes buffer layers microstructure from nearly amorphous to nano‐crystalline. The nitride or carbo‐nitride layers turned out to be less sensitive to changes in nitrogen flow during deposition. The columnar microstructure of Cr layers is coarser than those in CrN ones under the same deposition condition. This observation proved also that relying on PLD technique as thin as 30 nm layers might be formed within multilayer Cr/CrN coatings.