A cam treatment to reduce the friction coefficient thereof relative to a counterpart in an area provided with a hard coating made from amorphous Diamond-Like Carbon or DLC, involves disposing the cams on a support, bringing the support and the cams into a chamber placed under vacuum so as to clean the cams, bringing the support into relative movement along a trajectory of travel relative to a coating source, and taking the cams off the support before assembling them on a camshaft; the method involves disposing the cams on the support in a fixed configuration which is defined in such a way that the cams are brought successively opposite the source with orientations and at distances substantially identical relative to the source, to deposit a hard coating made from amorphous Diamond-Like Carbon or DLC, selectively on the fraction of the section of the cams that is oriented towards the source.

Improved thin film coatings, cutting tool materials and processes for cutting tool applications are disclosed. A boron-doped graded diamond thin film for forming a highly adhesive surface coating on a cemented carbide (WCCo) cutting tool material is provided. The thin film is fabricated in a HFCVD reactor. It is made of a bottom layer of BMCD in contact with a surface layer of the cemented carbide, a top layer made of NCD and a transition layer with a decreasing concentration gradient of boron obtained by changing the reaction conditions through ramp up option in hot filament CVD reactor. The top layer has a low friction coefficient. The bottom layer in the coating substrate interface has better interfacial adhesion through cobalt and boron reactivity and decreased cobalt diffusivity in the diamond. The transition layer has minimized lattice mismatch and sharp stress concentration between the top and bottom layers.

A reactor includes a plasma duct; a gas inlet, at a distal end of the plasma duct, for receiving a gas; a gas outlet at a proximal end of the plasma duct for removing a portion of the gas to generate a gas flow through the plasma duct; a separating baffle positioned between the plasma duct and the gas outlet for restricting gas flow to maintain high pressure in the plasma duct; a shielded cathodic arc source positioned in a cathode chamber at the proximal end; a remote anode, positioned in the plasma duct, for holding a substrate and cooperating with the cathodic arc source to generate an electron flow opposite the gas flow, to initiate a plasma discharge perpendicular to the remote anode at least in vicinity of the remote anode and deposit ions of the plasma discharge on the substrate to form a diamond coating.

A surface-coated cutting tool includes a base material and a coating formed on the base material. The coating includes an -Al.sub.2O.sub.3 layer. The -Al.sub.2O.sub.3 layer contains a plurality of -Al.sub.2O.sub.3 crystal grains and chlorine, and has a TC(006) of more than 5 in texture coefficient TC(hkl). The -Al.sub.2O.sub.3 layer includes lower and upper layers, the lower layer is located closer to the base material than the upper layer is, and the upper layer is located opposite to the base material across the lower layer, in a thickness direction of the -Al.sub.2O.sub.3 layer. The lower layer has a thickness of 1.0 m. The upper layer has a thickness of 0.5 m or more. The chlorine in the lower layer has a concentration distribution in which an atomic concentration C.sub.Cl of the chlorine decreases in a direction away from the base material, in a thickness direction of the lower layer.

A coated tool has a substrate and a hard material coating deposited on the substrate. The hard material coating has a layer structure in the following order, starting from the substrate: a titanium nitride layer, a titanium boron nitride transition layer, and a titanium diboride layer. The titanium boron nitride transition layer has a boron content that increases from the titanium nitride layer in the direction of the titanium diboride layer. The boron content does not exceed 15 at %.

The invention relates to a process for coating an article (1), wherein a coating (2) having one or more coating layers (3, 4, 5) is applied to the article (1), wherein at least one coating layer (5) is formed essentially from aluminium, titanium and nitrogen, wherein the coating layer (5) has, at least in some regions, adjoining lamellae of different chemical composition and is deposited from a gas phase comprising at least one aluminium precursor and at least one titanium precursor. According to the invention, by setting a molar ratio of aluminium to titanium, the lamellae of different chemical composition are each formed with a cubic structure, it being possible for aluminium and titanium to be partly replaced by other metals and for nitrogen to be partly replaced by oxygen and/or carbon with retention of the cubic structure. The invention further relates to a correspondingly produced coating (2).

An article or vessel is described including a vessel surface and a coating set comprising at least one tie coating, at least one barrier coating, and at least one pH protective coating. For example, the coating set can comprise a tie coating, a barrier coating, a pH protective coating and a second barrier coating; and in the presence of a fluid composition, the fluid contacting surface is the barrier coating or layer. The respective coatings can be applied by PECVD of a polysiloxane precursor. Such vessels can have a coated interior portion containing a fluid with a pH of 4 to 8. The barrier coating prevents oxygen from penetrating into the thermoplastic vessel, and the tie coating and pH protective coating together protect the barrier layer from the contents of the vessel. The second barrier coating is comparable to glass surface if needed.

Embodiments generally relate to multi-layer buffer structures on silicon. One method for forming such a structure comprises: providing a (111) silicon substrate; using ALD to deposit a first layer of AlN on the substrate; using first and second precursor materials at a first V-III ratio to deposit a plurality of AlN islands forming a second layer on the first layer; using the first and second precursor materials at a second V-III ratio, to deposit a third layer of AlN overlying and in contact with the islands and the first layer between the islands, forming domains; and using the first and second precursor materials at a third V-III ratio, to deposit a fourth layer of AlN on the third layer. All depositions occur at one predetermined temperature range. The fourth layer is characterized by a fourth layer top surface that is anatomically smooth.

Described herein are devices and methods related to compositionally graded buffers (CGB) and methods and/or systems for producing CGBs. CGBs enable the growth of high quality materials that are lattice mismatched to a substrate. More specifically, the present disclosure relates to methods for making CGBs by hydride vapor phase epitaxy (HVPE). HVPE methods using a single chamber for producing a CGB may result in a transience in the CGB layers as the flows supplying the reactants are switched to produce the next subsequent layer in the CGB. In contrast to this static style of grading, the present disclosure describes a dynamic method for producing CGBs, in which multiple growth chambers are utilized.

An article or vessel is described including a vessel surface and a coating set comprising at least one tie coating, at least one barrier coating, and at least one pH protective coating. For example, the coating set can comprise a tie coating, a barrier coating, a pH protective coating and a second barrier coating; and in the presence of a fluid composition, the fluid contacting surface is the barrier coating or layer. The respective coatings can be applied by PECVD of a polysiloxane precursor. Such vessels can have a coated interior portion containing a fluid with a pH of 4 to 8. The barrier coating prevents oxygen from penetrating into the thermoplastic vessel, and the tie coating and pH protective coating together protect the barrier layer from the contents of the vessel. The second barrier coating is comparable to glass surface if needed.