SBIR Phase I: Effectively-Thick Coating of High-Wear Surfaces with Application to Cutting Tools

这个小企业创新研究（SBIR）第一阶段项目旨在开发一种用于机床应用的有效厚涂层（ETC）技术。该技术将提供比传统涂层厚5-20倍的有效厚度，同时减少目前限制厚度的分层问题。该方法是对刀具进行微加工，形成特定的图案，然后通过化学气相沉积（CVD）或物理气相沉积（PVD）技术沉积涂层。该项目的更广泛/商业影响将是为机床提供更厚的涂层，从而延长其使用寿命并降低成本。机床涂层在应用中面临的挑战之一是，在机床的其他部件受到损害之前，薄涂层通常会被磨损，从而导致高成本。另一方面，当厚度超过一个临界点时，涂层往往会从基材上分层，这使得沉积具有所需厚度的涂层非常困难。该技术将提供具有更高有效厚度的涂层，并有望将机床寿命延长2倍。

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project aims to develop an effectively-thick coating (ETC) technology for machine tool applications. This technology will provide an effective thickness that is 5-20 times thicker than that of traditional coating while abating delamination issues that currently limit thickness. The approach is to micromachine the cutting tool to form a specific pattern followed by the deposition of coating via chemical vapor deposition (CVD) or physical vapor deposition (PVD) techniques. The broader/commercial impact of this project will be the potential to obtain much thicker coating for machine tool, thus extend its lifetime and reduce costs. One of the challenges in the application of machine tool coating is that thin coating is usually worn away before the other parts of the machine tool are compromised, resulting in high cost. On the other hand, the coating tends to delaminate from the substrate when the thickness is over a critical point, making it very difficult to deposit coating with desired thickness. This technology will offer a coating with much higher effective thickness and is expected to extend the machine tool life time by a factor of 2.