Nanostructured Metal Carbide Coatings
for Improved Tribological Performance

In collaboration with researchers in Chemistry and Mechanical Engineering at UNH and at the Wright Air Force Base, we have begun a program to develop nanostructured transition metal carbide coatings with improved hardness, toughness and tribological properties. Precipitate-hardened carbides, carbide/carbide multilayers and carbide/metal multilayers will be deposited by pulsed laser deposition (PLD), ion sputtering and chemical vapor deposition (CVD).

Films grown by PLD are affected by a large number of process parameters, such as target material, laser intensity, power density and wavelength, substrate temperature, and the nature and pressure of the ambient gas. On a microscopic level, however, the critical deposition parameters are the energy distributions of neutral and charged particles in the laser plume, and their relative flux densities. A quadrupole mass filter will be used to measure these quantities during film growth in order to establish and understand their effect on the structural, chemical and mechanical properties of the deposited films.

Collaborators