Rolling-sliding, scuffing and tribocorrosion behaviour of PVD multilayer coatings for gears application

Author: R. Bayon, C. Zubizarreta, R. Nevshupa, J. Carlos Rodriguez, X. Fernandez, U. Ruiz de Gopegui, A. Igartua, et al. Date2011

In the past decade, the emerging new class of nanoscale multilayer coatings has offered to the materials scientists a powerful toolbox for the engineering of the design of PVD coatings through a combination of the multilayer concept with new nano-structured coatings (Román, 1993; Kok, 2005). 

The multilayer nanocoatings usually have enhanced wear resistance, corrosion resistance and slightly lower friction coefficient as compared with monolithic coatings of the same materials (Celis, 2006; Mischler, 2008). These new coatings demonstrated their good wear resistance in some industrial applications (Bayon, 2009; Cardoso, 2009). However, to be used in gears or rolling bearing applications, the coatings must have also good anti-scuffing performance and corrosion-resistance. In the present work we performed comparative tribological and corrosion characterization for several multilayer coatings based on the combination of metal/metal nitride films like CrN, ZrCN or TiN deposited by guided vacuum arc deposition.