A review of the present state of art in hard coatings grown from the vapor phase

Hard‐coating materials range from ultrahard materials such as ‘‘diamondlike carbon’’ through refractory compounds to alloys. However, transition‐metal carbides and nitrides have achieved by far the highest level of commercial success. Titanium nitride and titanium carbide are the most studied and used. In this paper a review of the hard coating literature is given and includes in addition to nitrides and carbides also oxides, borides, mixed compounds, metals and alloys, and ‘‘diamondlike’’ carbon coatings. Only coatings grown from the vapor phase are discussed. Some considerations involved in selecting coating/substrate combinations as well as basic concepts of hardness and hardness measurements are also given. For example, it is shown that in order to measure the hardness of the coatings correctly the ratio between the film thickness and the depth of the indentation has to exceed a critical value, which depends on the coating/substrate combination. For TiN on steel, the coating thickness has to be a fact...