TiN synthesized by filtered arc deposition combined with electron cyclotron resonance

Summary form only given. Titanium nitride thin films possess many good properties including blood compatibility but the properties are strongly dependent on the fabricating process. In this work, TiN films were deposited on 316L substrate using filter arc deposition (FAD) combined with and without electron cyclotron resonance (ECR), and the properties of the two types of films were evaluated. The first group TiN films were deposited using the Ti ion beam produced by a filtered arc source in a nitrogen ambient, whereas the second set of samples were deposited using FAD with an ECR-sustained nitrogen plasma. X-ray diffraction (XRD) was employed to determine the structure, nano-indentation measurements were used to evaluate the hardness, atomic force microscopy (AFM) was utilized to evaluate the surface morphology and pin-on-disk tribology tests were employed to assess the wear resistance.