Ion beam analyses in titanium nitride technology

Abstract

TI e technology of hard coatings based on stoichiometric titanium nitride thin films has been inovated since the past few years in order to fulfill the demands for better performance and lower processing cost put by the large xale industrial users. The different strategies used to improve the performance consist in (i) modifying the coating composition by introducing otlier elements than Ti and N in the film (multicomponent coatings), (ii) modifying the coating structure by using multilayered composites, and (iii) altering the coating density and porosity by using plasma and ion beam assisted processes. All these different strategies bring about new materials which have to be characterized as an essential part of the refearch and development work. In the present article the use of ion beam analyses is de jcribed (mainly Rutherford backscattering and nuclear reaction analyses) to characterize the thickness, composition, depth profile, contamination and structure of new thin film protective coating materials based on titaniun nitride