The influence of nitrogen on the mechanical behaviour of multilayered coatings

Multilayered films are a new kind of coating that belong to a more plentiful family of materials labelled as nanostructured materials. These kinds of coatings stand in the frontier of investigation in thin films for structural applications. In the present work, multilayered coatings with alternated layers of WTi(N) and Ag were deposited to be used as wear resistant surfaces. The association of the high hardness, wear resistance of WTi(N) layers [Proceedings of the Eleventh LAWPSP Symposium, SL1.1-SL1.7, Bombay, India (1998); Surf. Coat. Technol., 102 (1998), 50] and the good ductility of the silver ones is the guarantee of obtaining a better mechanical performant coating. However, to reach a satisfactory comprehension of the behaviour of the coatings in service a true understanding of some important properties is needed. For this reason, hardness, Young modulus, internal stresses and adhesion were evaluated, as well as function of the number and thickness of the layers.