Carbon Based Coatings Deposited on Nitrided Stainless Steel: Study of Thermal Degradation

Amorphous hydrogenated carbon (DLC) coatings have a high hardness depending on the relative amount of sp(3)/sp(2) bondings. They also exhibit an extremely low friction coefficient and are chemically inert. However, these coatings have some disadvantages which limit their applications. For instance, adhesion is poor when they are deposited on metallic substrates and they are also unstable at high temperatures, degrading into graphite and loosing hardness. In this work, DLC coatings were deposited on precipitation hardening stainless steel (PH Corrax) which was plasma nitrided before the coating deposition. The samples were submitted to annealing treatments for an hour at different temperatures from 200 to 600 degrees C, together with a control group, which was only coated but not nitrided. After each annealing cycle, Raman Spectroscopy, nanoindentation and microscopy were used to check film properties. It was demonstrated that the nitriding pre treatment improved not only adhesion but also the thermal stability of the DLC, slowing degradation and preventing delamination.