Sketching novel nanostructured diamond-consisted thin films on AISI 321 stainless steel: Microstructure, mechanical and tribological properties

In a reactive direct current (DC) magnetron sputtering (MS) system, converting the cathode (target) magnetic field configuration from a balanced magnetron (BM) to an unbalanced magnetron (UBM) is an impressive strategy to enforce the energetic ion bombardment, providing sufficient activation energy for deposition of high -quality nanostructured films. In the present work, the nanostructured (grain size < 100 nm) BM and UBM sputtered Niobium-doped amorphous Carbon (Nb: a-Carbon) films' microstructural, mechanical, and tribological characteristics changes were thoroughly investigated and compared. From the XRD and Raman analysis out-comes both graphite-like Carbon (GLC) and Niobium carbide (NbC) phases were detected in the BM sputtered film. However, novel cubic and hexagonal crystalline Diamond (CD) phases were successfully constructed from the UBM sputtered films besides the GLC and NbC phases. Records displayed that the change over the cathode magnetic field configuration from BM to UBM is a responsible factor for the reduction of the surface roughness (from 32 nm to 25 nm) and increment of the crystallite size (from 14 nm to 15.5 nm), hardness (from 18 GPa to 27 GPa), and elastic modulus (from 210 GPa to 425 GPa) values. On the contrary, via changing BM to UBM sputtering the films' tribological properties were negatively affected, leading to the increase of the coefficient of friction (COF) from 0.09 to 0.11 and the wear rate (WR) from 5.25 x 10-5 mm(3)/N.m to 9 x 10-5 mm3/N.m. The achieved results confirmed that the UBM configuration could be selected as a critical facility over the MS system that gives enough energy to arrange Carbon species in the crystalline Diamond phase at a relatively low temperature. One step further, the Ar/CH4 ratio variation was assessed as an influential factor that leaves consid-erable changes over the UBM sputtered film characteristics. The results indicated that by doubling the Ar/CH4 ratio, the nanocrystalline Diamond phases are still observable. However, this change led to the increase in surface roughness (from 25 nm to 28 nm) and crystallite sizes (NbC, from 15.5 nm to 18.6 nm, cubic Diamond, from 25.8 nm to 36 nm, and hexagonal Diamond from 18.9 nm to 21.6 nm). While the variations adversely affected the UBM sputtered films' hardness (from 27 GPa to 21 GPa) and modulus of elasticity (from 425 GPa to 330 GPa). Simultaneously, the COF and WR endured a slight increment, from 0.11 to 0.14 and 9 x 10-5 mm3/N.m to 9.8 x 10-5 mm3/N.m, respectively.