Titanium aluminium nitride
chemical substance
Titanium aluminium nitride (TiAlN) or aluminium titanium nitride (AlTiN; for aluminium contents higher than 50%) is a group of metastable hard coatings consisting of nitrogen and the metallic elements aluminium and titanium. This compound as well as similar compounds(such as TiN and TiCN) are most notably used for coating machine tools such and endmills and drills to change their properties, such as increased thermal stability and/or wear resistance. Four important compositions (metal content 100 wt.%) are deposited in industrial scale by physical vapor deposition methods:
Ti50Al50N (industrially introduced by the company CemeCoat (now CemeCon) Aachen, BRD, group T. Leydecker ca. 1989)
Al55Ti45N (industrially introduced by the company Metaplas Ionon (now Oerlikon), Bergisch Gladbach, BRD, group J. Vetter ca. 1999)
Al60Ti40N (industrially introduced by the company Kobe Steel, Kobe, Japan, ca. 1992)
Al66Ti34N (industrially introduced by the company Metaplas (now Oerlikon) group J. Vetter ca. 1996).
The fundamental reasons why TiAlN coatings outperform pure Titanium nitride (TiN) coatings are considered to be:
Increased oxidation resistance at elevated temperatures due to the formation of a protective aluminium-oxide layer at the surface
Increased hardness in the freshly deposited films due to micro-structure changes and solid solution hardening
Age hardening of the coatings at temperatures typical for cutting tools operation due to spinodal decomposition of TiAlN into TiN and cubic AlN
The age hardening phenomenon has been shown to originate in a mismatch in the quantum mechanical electronic structure of TiN and AlN.
The coatings are mostly deposited by cathodic arc deposition or magnetron sputtering.
Even though most TiAlN and AlTiN coatings are industrially synthesized using alloy targets with specific percentages of aluminium and titanium it is possible to produce TiAlN coatings with pure Al and Ti targets using a cathodic arc deposition technique.
TiAlN and AlTiN coatings from pure Al and pure Ti targets by Cathodic arc deposition have been produced industrially by NanoShield PVD Thailand since 1999.
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