Metal-carbon-layers for industrial application in automotive industry

Physical vapour deposition (PVD) coatings have been well established in the cutting tool industry for many years. In the near future the high wear resistance and low friction coefficient of PVD coatings will be of interest for applications in constructional elements. Today the deposition process and the quality control of coated parts are accompanied by several problems: during the deposition process the temperature of the constructional elements must not exceed 200 °C; the composition of the deposited layers has to be reproducible; methods for the quality control of coated parts need to be integrated in series control. These problems will be discussed for reactively sputtered metal-carbon layers (W-C:H). Methods of quality control such as Rockwell C indentation and glow discharge optical spectrometry will be illustrated. First applications of W-C layers in the automotive industry are presented.