Microstructural changes in ion implanted titanium nitride

The present work considers deriving microstructural data on the effect of ion implantation into TiN as determined using glancing incidence X-ray diffraction. Monolithic TiN coatings, deposited onto cemented carbide by chemical vapor deposition, have been implanted with gas or metal ions at different doses and acceleration energies. The results confirm that large changes in the residual stress and the strain distributions are introduced which extend well beyond the implanted zone (IZ) of the material. This implantation affected zone (IAZ) extends beyond the thickness ranges, 0.01–2.6 μm, studied in the present work. The residual stress in the IZ was high and can be tensile or compressive depending on whether vacancy generation and atom peening effects dominate. There are also very large, irregular, distributions of strain which correspond to high dislocation densities and–or grain refinement (comminution) and include lattice vacancies detected previously by slow positron annihilation. The forward momentum of the ions always introduces a dense dislocation network and high residual stresses in the IAZ corresponding to the so-called long range effect. The dislocation density increases and the residual stress becomes more compressive with increasing ion momentum.