Hard nanostructured protective coatings with smart stress design

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Hard nanostructured protective coatings, HNPC, provide enhanced tribological properties related to their high hardness, high wear-, scratch-, abrasion- and erosion-resistance, and low sliding wear, frequently combined with other functional characteristics such as corrosion resistance, high temperature stability, controlled thermal conductivity, biocompatibility, antifouling behaviour, and others. They are essential part of a wide range of application areas including aerospace, automobile, manufacturing, biomedical, forestry, energy control and others, and they represent a significant economic, environmental and energy impact worldwide. However, the application of HNPCs is often limited due to high stresses in the coatings. Understanding the origins of stress and controlling the stress level is of key importance for the performance and reliability of thin film and coating systems in various applications.***The proposed research program of the present Discovery Grant, application aims at performing cutting-edge studies using a holistic approach, namely to control the stress evolution in hard protective coatings by selectively adjusting the energetics of plasma-surface interactions during the film growth by pulse management in low pressure plasma based techniques PVD and PECVD deposition methods. This will then allow one to implement the stress characteristics, in smart and predictive way in the design of HNPC systems giving rise to their significantly improved tribomechanical performance the HNPC acceptance, and thus contribute to sustainable development.*****