A nanoindentation study of magnetron co-sputtered nanocrystalline ternary nitride coatings

Abstract

Nanoindentation testing was used to determine the hardness, elastic modulus and plasticity parameter of three newly developed ternary nitride coatings with nano-sized grains. With decreasing nitrogen deposition pressure, grain diameter of the coatings decreases that leads to both higher nanohardness and elastic modulus with conservation of satisfactory values of plasticity characteristic.