Multi-layered, nano-structured metal-nitride and carbo-nitride coatings are very well established in the cutting tool industry as well as in other industries. For years most of such coatings have been deposited by arc evaporation despite the “droplets”, since arc evaporation is an extremely economic process with significant advantages such as high intrinsic ionization which is particularly beneficial during metal etching.
Magnetron sputtering with its low ionization and its deficiencies in adhesion and productivity significantly improved with the development of HiPIMS. An even more significant improvement is the HiPIMS V+ process where adding positive reverse pulses creates enhanced ion assistance and incorporation (i.e. deposition rate) to the growing film, thus increasing the deposition rate.
On the other hand, rotatable magnetrons are well known to provide better material usage, longer operation and higher operation power levels.
The novel industrial system introduced in this paper shows the unique combination of HiPIMS V+ with rotatable magnetrons in a batch coater system, thus enhancing system productivity. This process is applied in a multi-cathode magnetron sputtering system using four pieces of 1 m long rotatable cathodes equipped with a strong unbalanced magnetic design allowing high ion-to-neutral ratios to the substrate. The system can be configured to operate in unipolar HiPIMS, Dual Bipolar HiPIMS or DC-Pulsed.
Besides a description of the newly designed coating system, nitride and carbo-nitride nano-structured multilayered coating structures based on Ti, AlTi, AlCr and TiSi deposited in such system are shown and characterized, concerning their micro-structure, adhesion, microhardness and composition.
Wear and performance data are presented.