Protective Hard Coating

Hard coating materials are widely used in machining industries such as cutting tools, molds and wear-resistant parts due to their good wear resistance, corrosion resistance and high temperature oxidation resistance. The preparation methods of hard coatings mainly include physical vapor deposition (PVD) and chemical vapor deposition (CVD).

All PVD processes are carried out under high vacuum conditions. The PVD process is used for the deposition of coatings made of nitrides, carbides and carbonitrides of Ti, Cr, Zr and alloys like AlCr, AlTi, TiSi on a large range of tools and components. The typical process temperature for PVD coatings is between 250 and 450 °C. In some cases, PVD coatings can be deposited at temperatures below 70 °C or up to 600 °C, depending on substrate materials and expected behavior in the application.The coating thickness ranges from 2 to 5 µm, but can be as thin as a few hundred nanometers or as thick as 15 or more µm. Substrate materials include steels, non-ferrous metals, tungsten carbides as well as pre-plated plastics. 

Decorative Coating

Zirconium Zr metal, titanium Ti metal, chromium Cr metal, titanium-aluminum TiAl alloys and niobium Nb metals are also used as target material in decorative PVD processes, to deposte high quality surface finish for watches, sanitary and door hardware, with many manufacturers marketing coated products with long time guarantees on their appearance, it offers a longer lifetime, metallic colours, scratch protection and is environmentally friendly. 

Ceramic coatings are deposited to increase the hardness of the coating. This is achieved by introducing reactive gases during the deposition process. The most widely used reactive gases for decorative coatings are nitrogen and methane or acetylene to produce metal-nitride, metal-carbide, metal-carbonitride and diamond like carbon DLC coatings. Also oxygen can be used to produce oxides, oxinitrides, etc. The decorative coatings are produced in a certain colour range, depending on the metal-to-gas ratio in the coating and the structure of the coating. Both of these factors can be altered by changing the deposition parameters.

Zirconium is the most widely used target material for decorative coatings in sanitary and door hardware and other applications such as watch cases because of the relatively wide colour range that is possible, ZrCN for example can look exactly the same as gold if the composition is correct.

Other targets available for hard coating and decorative coating

Metallic Materials:  TiAlSi, CrAlSi, TiAlCrSi, TiSi, CrSi, AlMoTi, special alloys can be customized without minimal order quantity.

Ceramic Materials: TiB2, WC, B4C;

Available Standard target dimensions, special size can be customized