Structural stability of decorative ZrNxOy thin films

• Autor(a) principal: Carvalho, P.
• Data de Publicação: 2005
• Outros Autores: Vaz, F., Rebouta, L., Carvalho, S., Cunha, L., Goudeau, Ph., Rivière, J. P., Alves, E., Cavaleiro, A.
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10316/4236; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.surfcoat.2005.02.100
• topic: Sputtering; Zirconium nitride; Thermal degradation

ZrNxOy thin films were prepared by rf reactive magnetron sputtering. The thermal stability of the coatings was tested in vacuum for an annealing time of 1 h in the temperature range 400-800 °C. Residual stresses originated by the deposition process were partially or almost completely released with the annealing, which is consistent with the X-ray diffraction results. Samples with low oxygen fraction (0.10 < fO2 < 0.22) showed no significant changes in hardness after thermal annealing at 800 °C. For intermediate and high oxygen fractions, an initial decrease in hardness at 600 °C annealing is followed by an inversion at the highest temperatures (700 and 800 °C, respectively), resulting from possible oxide phases crystallization, defect annealing at high temperatures and some extended phase segregations. The increase in the oxygen fraction is followed by a decrease of hardness in the as-deposited samples towards the values of "pure" ZrO2. No significant changes in colour were observed with the annealing.