Surface characterization of tribological coatings: wear properties, thickness and roughness

The Institute for Research in Advanced Materials and Mathematics (INAMAT2) is a multidisciplinary research institute that has common objectives such as the development, dissemination and transfer of knowledge from various fields. The materials engineering department has a long experience in studies related to coatings and the surface improvement of materials.

Our research focuses on improving tribomechanical properties of Diamond-Like Carbon (DLC) coatings, deposited by the novel PVD technique High Power impulse magnetron sputtering (HiPIMS) with positive pulses on tool steels. These coatings are of great interest to the industry because of their extraordinary properties: excellent wear resistance, very low friction coefficient, great hardness, or biocompatibility. The aim of these studies was to improve the tribomechanical properties, such as, adhesive or wear resistance, of the DLC coatings on different steel substrates.

With the Sensofar´s 3D optical profiler we expected to better characterize the surfaces, with greater accuracy in the  measurements and higher quality 2D and 3D images.

Coated and uncoated round and plane samples have been measured. Different steels and ceramics have been used as substrate and high-quality coatings, such as DLC, are deposited on them. In these samples we carry out friction and wear tests with a pin-on-disc tribometer and after that we measure the wear tracks.

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