MULTICOMPONENT AND MULTILAYER PHYSICALLY VAPOR-DEPOSITED COATINGS FOR CUTTING TOOLS

The physical vapour deposition (PVD) processes are characterized by high flexibility in terms of the film systems which can be deposited. The hard phases of the multicomponent and multilayer films can be formed from any desired metal and metalloid components. PVD films can also be deposited onto virtually any substrate material or workpiece geometry. The paper reviews PVD processes suitable for tool coating applications. It then characterizes advantages of multicomponent and multilayer coatings and describes the coating tool combinations which are most widely used in industry and for which research results indicate the greatest future application potential. Particularly promising in this respect are PVD coatings which achieve significantly prolonged tool lives in interrupted cut machining, such as Ti-Zr-N, Ti-C-N and TiN/Ti-C-N multilayer coatings.