Magnetron sputtered superhard nanocomposite coatings with high toughness for wear protection

Abstract

Nanocomposite thin films comprise at least two phases, a nanocrystalline phase and a matrix phase, where the matrix can be either nanocrystalline or amorphous phase. The general characteristics of nanocomposite coating are a host material with another material homogenously embedded in it, with one (or both) of these materials having a characteristic length scale of 1-100 ran as schematically illustrated in Fig. 1-1.