Tribological behavior of thick and soft DLC coatings

Abstract

Austenitic stainless steels are widely used in industry due to their good corrosion resistance; however, they present poor mechanical properties. Different coatings such as DLC “Diamond Like Carbon” can be used in order to improve surface properties. According to the sp3/sp2 ratio and the hydrogen content, DLC coatings can be classified in hard DLC or soft DLC. These coatings have low friction coefficient, good wear resistance and chemical inertia; however, they present adhesion problems when they are deposited on metallic substrates. For this reason, the plasma nitriding previous to the DLC coating deposition could be convenient. Although there are several publications about DLC coated and nitrided stainless steels, not many contributions have been found in the literature about soft and thick coatings. In this work, the tribological behavior and adhesion of thick and soft DLC coatings deposited on nitrided and non-nitrided austenitic stainless steels were studied.