Published on December 2019 | Mechanical Engineering, Tribology, Friction and Wear

Effect of Pillar and Mesh Structure of Tetrahedral Amorphous Carbon (ta-C) coatings on the Wear Properties and Fracture Toughness of the Coating

Wear by fracture is one of the reasons for the DLC coating failures in the tribological application. This study presents the analysis of relation between the wear and the fracture-toughness on the novel Pillar and Mesh structure ta-C coatings, as well as conventional ta-C coatings by employing micro indentation method. Mesh ta-C shows the highest fracture-toughness value with 16.6 MPa.m1/2, followed by Pillar ta-C with 13.4 MPa.m1/2 in comparison to ta-C. Increased of fracture-toughness result in higher resistance to wear for ta-C with Pillar and Mesh structure, which explained by the enhancement of crack propagation inhibition through intersection-effect and the existence of sp2 hybridization. Furthermore, higher rate of crack-energy dissipation provides by the Pillar and Mesh ta-C reduces the effect of brittle characteristic of conventional ta-C.