Wear-resistant amorphous SiC coatings produced by plasma-enhanced CVD

The use of plasma-enhanced CVD allows the deposition of thin films with relatively high coating rates at temperatures below 400 degrees C and on substrates with a three-dimensional geometry. In this way, it is possible to deposit amorphous silicon carbide (a-SiC:H) on temperature-sensitive materials for tribological applications to replace ceramic materials that are difficult to process and expensive to manufacture. The aim of this paper is to examine the correlations between the deposition parameters and the resulting layer characteristics, using an excitation frequency of 450 kHz. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved.