A surface-coated cutting tool including a substrate including a rake face and a flank face and a coating which covers a surface of the substrate is provided. The substrate is made of a cBN sintered material or a ceramic sintered material. The coating includes an alternating layer. The alternating layer is made by alternately stacking a first layer and a second layer different in composition from the first layer. The first layer contains Al, Cr, and N. The second layer contains Ti, Al, and N. A ratio T1/T2 between a thickness Ti of the first layer and a thickness T2 of the second layer is not lower than 0.1 and lower than 1. There are thirty or more interfaces at which the first layer and the second layer are in contact with each other.

Methods for forming high temperature coating systems are provided. In embodiments, the coating formation method includes forming a fracture-resistant Thermal Barrier Coating (TBC) layer over a workpiece surface. The fracture-resistant TBC layer is produced from a first coating precursor material containing an amount of zirconia in mole percent (ZrO.sub.mol%1) and an amount of tantala in mole percent (TaO.sub.mol%1). A Calcium-Magnesium Aluminosilicate (CMAS) resistant TBC layer is formed over the fracture-resistant TBC layer from a second coating precursor material, which contains an amount of zirconia in mole percent (ZrO.sub.mol%2), an amount of tantala in mole percent (TaO.sub.mol%2), and an amount of one or more rare earth oxides in mole percent (REO.sub.mol%2). The first and second coating precursor materials are formulated such that ZrO.sub.mol%1 is greater than ZrO.sub.mol%2, TaO.sub.mol%1 is less than TaO.sub.mol%2, and TaO.sub.mol%2 is substantially equivalent to REO.sub.mol%2.

A physical vapor deposition (PVD) chamber and a method of operation thereof are disclosed. Chambers and methods are described that provide a chamber comprising one or more of contours that reduce particle defects, temperature control and or measurement and and/or voltage particle traps to reduce processing defects.

A protective coating layer, an electronic device including such a protective coating layer, and the methods of making the same are provided. The electronic device includes a substrate, a thin film circuit layer disposed over the substrate, and a protective coating layer disposed over the thin film circuit layer. The protective coating layer includes a first coating and a second coating disposed over the first coating. Each coating has a cross-plane thermal conductivity in a direction normal to a respective coating surface equal to or higher than 0.5 W/(m*K). The first coating and the second coating have different crystal structures, or different crystalline orientations, or different compositions, or a combination thereof to provide different nanoindentation hardness. The first coating has a hardness lower than that of the second coating.

Disclosed herein is a rare-earth oxide coating on a surface of an article with one or more interruption layers to control crystal growth and methods of its formation. The coating may be deposited by atomic layer deposition and/or by chemical vapor deposition. The rare-earth oxides in the coatings disclosed herein may have an atomic crystalline phase that is different from the atomic crystalline phase or the amorphous phase of the one or more interruption layers.

Embodiments described herein relate to methods and materials for fabricating semiconductor device structures. In one example, a metal film stack includes a plurality of metal containing films and a plurality of metal derived films arranged in an alternating manner. In another example, a metal film stack includes a plurality of metal containing films which are modified into metal derived films. In certain embodiments, the metal film stacks are used in oxide/metal/oxide/metal (OMOM) structures for memory devices.

A cutting tool comprising a base material and a coating, wherein the coating includes a first layer having a multilayer structure in which a first unit layer and a second unit layer are alternately stacked; a thickness of the first unit layer is 2 to 50 nm; a thickness of the second unit layer is 2 to 50 nm; a thickness of the first layer is 1.0 ?m or more and 20 ?m or less, the first unit layer is composed of Ti.sub.aAl.sub.bB.sub.cN, and the second unit layer is composed of Ti.sub.dAl.sub.eB.sub.fN, wherein 0.49?a?0.70, 0.19?b?0.40, 0.10?c?0.20, a+b+c=1.00, 0.39?d?0.60, 0.29?e?0.50, 0.10<f?0.20, d+e+f=1.00, 0.05?a-d?0.20, and 0.05?e-b?0.20 are satisfied, and a percentage of the number of atoms of titanium to the total number of atoms of titanium, aluminum and boron is 45% or more in the first layer.

A coated cutting tool comprising a substrate containing a cubic boron nitride-containing sintered body, and a coating layer formed on the substrate, wherein the coating layer comprises a lowermost layer and an alternating laminate structure in this order, the lowermost layer comprises (Al.sub.1-xCr.sub.x)N, an average thickness of the lowermost layer is 0.01 ?m or more and 0.2 ?m or less, the alternating laminate structure includes mutually different two kinds of compound layers of a first compound layer containing (Al.sub.1-y1Cr.sub.y1)N and a second compound layer containing (Al.sub.1-y2Cr.sub.y2)N alternately laminated repeatedly twice or more, an average thickness of the entire alternating laminate structure is 0.1 ?m or more and 1.2 ?m or less, an average thickness of the entire coating layer is 0.2 ?m or more and 1.3 ?m or less, and a compressive residual stress at the cubic crystal (111) plane is 3.0 GPa or less.

A metal cutting insert has a substrate body of cemented carbide, cermet, or ceramic and at least one cutting edge defined between a rake face and a relief face. The cutting insert has a CVD coating including a layer of aluminum titanium nitride having a cubic face centered lattice structure, represented by a formula (Al.sub.xTi.sub.1-xM.sub.y)C.sub.zN.sub.1-z wherein a stoichiometry coefficient of aluminum is 0.30<x<0.95, wherein M is at least one element selected from the group consisting of Cl and Ar, with a stoichiometry coefficient of which is 0y<0.01, and wherein a stoichiometry coefficient of carbon is 0z<0.3. The (Al.sub.xTi.sub.1-xM.sub.y)C.sub.zN.sub.1-z layer satisfies a relationship 10<|S.sub.1-S.sub.2|<500 MPa wherein S.sub.1 is the residual stress measured on the rake face, and S.sub.2 is the residual stress measured on the relief face.

A surface-coated cutting tool includes a coating layer having a laminated structure that includes first sublayers and second sublayers having a cubic crystal structure and has an average thickness of 0.5 to 8 m, the bottommost and topmost sublayers being both first sublayers; the first sublayer has an average thickness of 0.1 to 2 m and a composition (Al.sub.1xCr.sub.x)N, where x=0.20 to the second sublayer has an average thickness of 0.1 to 2 m, has a composition (Al.sub.1-a-bCr.sub.aSi.sub.b)N where a=0.20 to 0.60, b=0.01 to 0.20, and has a repeated variation in Si content with an average interval of 1 to 100 nm between local minima and local maxima, the average local maximum and minimum are each within a specific range; and the diffraction peaks of the 111 and 200 diffraction peaks each have a predetermined full width at half maximum and a peak intensity.