Design and Analysis of Enhanced Chromium Nitride Film Performance by Tuning Sputtering Magnetic Systems

This paper presents the optimal chromium nitride (CrN) deposited performance by tuning magnetic systems on die steel in PVD. The strength of magnetic fields was controlled by adjusting the gap distance between magnet sets and target surfaces of the unbalanced magnetic field of sputtering systems. In L18 orthogonal experiments, the effect of control factors were explored such as gap distance between magnet set and target surface (GDMT), target current, argon and nitrogen flow rate, DC pulse frequency, and work distance. Hardness and wear behavior of the CrN films were analyzed using a statistical method. The wear rate was estimated by Pappus’s theorem. Among the results, the Cr2N phase with the mixture crystallographic orientations of (111) and (002) exhibited better wear resistance than CrN(200) with a single preferential orientation. In addition, variance analysis exhibited the largest percentage contribution to friction coefficient in comparison with the other two properties of friction coefficient and GDMT, which showed that GDMT is extremely sensitive to friction coefficient.