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

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.