CVD deposition and characterization of coloured Al2O3/ZrO2 multilayers

Coloured Al₂O₃/ZrO₂ multilayers have been deposited onto WC-Co based inserts by a CVD process. Through physical as well as optical analysis of such multilayers, colour is believed to originate from interference. The coatings are obtained with good process reproducibility. It was found that the ZrO₂ process used in the multilayer, with ZrCl₄ as the only metal chloride precursor, results in a mixture of tetragonal and monoclinic ZrO₂ phases. However by adding a relatively small amount of AlCl₃ during such a process results in ZrO₂ layers being composed of predominantly tetragonal ZrO₂ phase. Corresponding multilayers seem to have a more fine grained and smoother morphology whereas multilayers containing monoclinic ZrO₂ phase seem to be less perfect with existence of larger grains of ZrO₂ which are believed to scatter light and alter the reflectance of such a multilayer. In addition to this, such multilayers were found to be free of or with greatly reduced amount of thermal cracks, normally present in pure CVD grown Al₂O₃ layers.It is believed that, in the studied Al₂O₃/ZrO₂ multilayers, the observed tetragonal ZrO₂ phase is the result of a size effect, where small enough ZrO₂ crystallites energetically favor the tetragonal phase. However as the ZrO₂ crystallite size distribution is shifted to larger sizes it is believed that a mixture of crystallites with both stable and metastable tetragonal phases as well as a stable monoclinic phase is obtained. The proposed metastable tetragonal ZrO₂ phase may in fact explain the absence of thermal cracks in such multilayers through a transformation toughening mechanism, well known in ZrO₂ based ceramics.