Development of scratch- and corrosion-resistant coatings on stainless steel surfaces

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Our partner is looking for a way to improve both the durability and aesthetics of their stainless steel tableware product line by developing a hard coating to apply to the product's surface using a physical vapour deposition (PVD) system. Currently, their products are sold as uncoated stainless steel, resulting in a surface that is prone to being scratched or damaged during processing or from regular use of the product. The main research challenge is to develop a parameter space for the coating process (i.e. determining how vapour pressures, temperatures, deposition times, gas flow ratios, etc. are related to coating quality) that will enable us to create (a) recipe(s) that optimize(s) the hardness, adhesion, colour, and fingerprint resistance of the coatings. Research concerning proper substrate preparation and cleaning and the development of multi-step coating processes will be necessary to ensure the best possible final coating is achieved. Material tribology testing and analysis will be conducted on the various prototype coatings between deposition runs to further refine the parameter space.