Chacterization of titanium silicon nitride films deposited by PVD

In recent years, nitride coatings have found widespread applications for tool and other hard surfaces. In this work, the (Ti,Si)N system was investigated and some of its properties characterised. For this, (Ti,Si)N films with thicknesses ranging from 1 to 3.3 μm and different contents of Ti and Si were deposited onto silicon wafers and polished high-speed steel substrates by r.f. reactive magnetron sputtering technique. The atomic composition of the samples were measured by Rutherford Backscattering Spectrometry (RBS). Ti_1−xSi_xN samples with 0≤x≤0.37 were produced. With regard to the structural properties, two cubic crystallographic structures were found, with lattice parameters of about a=4.29 Å and 4.18 Å. The grain size, evaluated by Fourier analysis of X-ray peaks, ranged from 5 nm to 34 nm. Comparing the adhesion results, the Ti_0.70Si_0.30N and Ti_0.83Si_0.17N sample presented the best results in adhesion with a critical load for total failure around 115 N and 105 N, respectively.