A critical review of diamond like carbon coating for wear resistance applications
Introduction
Over the years, many researchers and industrialists are becoming concerned about optimizing and enhancing tribological properties for potential surface engineering applications. Wear (tribological process) occurs when two surfaces are in contact and both/one are moving relative to each other. A tribology study reveals that even 15–20% reduction in wear/friction can significantly reduce economic costs in relation to environmental benefits [1]. There are several tribology systems that can impart an ultra-low friction coefficient, high wear resistance and high mechanical properties. Application of coatings is one of the most widely used route in order to tailor surface morphology, wear performance, adhesion and fatigue strength of substrate material without altering bulk properties of the substrate. The commonly employed tribology techniques for coating deposition, thermal spray deposition, physical vapor deposition/chemical vapor deposition (PVD/ CVD), ion beam deposition, radio frequency magnetron sputtering (RF-M.S.) and electro deposition (ED). Successful deposition of materials open up new opportunity as well as encourages researchers to adopt new coating materials, having excellent electrical, mechanical, thermal, frictional and wear properties. Presently researchers have been focusing on materials diamond-like carbon (DLC) [[2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10], [11], [12], [13], [14], [15], [16], [17], [18]], carbon nanotubes (CNTs) [[19], [20], [21]], graphite-like carbon [9,[22], [23], [24], [25]] in order to fabricate coatings with excellent wear resistance, corrosion resistant, high thermal conductivity, and damping capacity. DLC and CNTs are carbon allotropes of sp2 and sp2 & sp3 hybridizations respectively. Amorphous carbon coating have shown excellent adhesion and friction resistance with potential application towards forming lubricant free sheet metal process [26]. In recent years, numerous research have been done to enhance wear performance of carbon-based coating materials. Even though lots of techniques are available for investigating physical and mechanical performance of DLC/CNTs coatings but still no standard procedures is available for calculating tribological properties of coated materials. To test tribological behaviors of DLC/CNTs, tribometers are used under ambient pressure with appropriate temperature and relative humidity. It has been examined that sliding speed, applied load, sliding distance and temperature are the most critical parameters which affect both friction and wear resistance. So in order to optimize and enhance frictional and wear behaviour, optimum test conditions must be used. Fig. 1 shows variation in Coefficient of friction for DLC (H-DLC/W-DLC) coating with N-based coating (TiCN/TiAl/TiN) material. A comparative study shows value of coefficient of friction (COF) of DLC (H-DLC/W-DLC) is lowest for W-DLC (0.10) due to carbon-rich layer on the substrate while N-based coating shows COF value greater than 0.45 due to the adhesion of titanium to the N-based coating surface [27].
Li et al. [28] examined DLC/GLC/CrN coatings on stainless steel under different environmental condition. In a comparative study, CrN (2 h) coating shows excellent load bearing capacity, high hardness, roughness, low friction coefficient and good adhesion strength under atmospheric and oil lubricating condition due to better lubrication of oil, high stability and viscosity. Another study based on Cr/GLC coating on seawater [29] and DLC coating on steel [30] reveals that due to dimple induce graphitization, COF and wear rate value decreases significantly as the dimple density increases. Praveen et al. [31] observed uniform deposition of CNTs particles on CNTs-Zn composite along with excellent corrosion resistance as CNTs layer deposition provides a physical barrier to the erosion. Zr-GLC nanocomposite coating found coefficient of friction (0.06) and wear rate (9*10−17 m3/Nm) values at an applied load of 1 N while coefficient of friction (0.10) and wear resistance (1.3*10−16 m3/Nm) values increase as the applied load increases to 3 N [32]. A study based on Cr/GLC coating examined on stainless steel substrate and sliding against SiC, Si3N4, Al2O3, ZrO2 and WC shows the friction coefficient value increases in ascending order as μSi3N4 < μSiC< μWC < μAl2O3 < μZrO2 [33]. Nowadays a number of automotive components have been coated with carbon nanotubes (CNTs) or diamond-like Carbon (DLC) coatings, to enhance tribological properties. Various such applications of nanotechnology opens up prospects for the deposition of novel smart carbon-based material.
The present work is principally concerned with discussion of various methods practiced to enhance low friction and good wear resistance properties and to furnish an outline of carbon-based materials deposited on a different substrate. Also, future prospects of adopting deposition techniques and materials to enrich the tribological properties have been discussed.
Section snippets
Deposition techniques
Fig. 2 shows techniques available for deposition of coating material. The commonly used deposition techniques are thermal spray deposition, electrodeposition, physical vapor deposition and chemical vapor deposition which are elaborated below:
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Thermal spray deposition
It is a deposition technique in which powder metal is sprayed onto a substrate material. Thermal spray has high deposition rate and is used to coat thick coating with low cost. It has wide range of coating material like ceramic,
Major types, properties and tribological behavior of carbon based coating
In last decades, use of carbon based materials on coating have been increasing progressively in numerous fields of engineering and technology. Table 4 shows comparison of structure of carbon material which are mostly used for coating deposition.
There are several mechanisms involved in the wear process but researchers believe that polishing wear and abrasive wear are the main mechanisms involved in CNTs/DLC surface film due to the effects of diffusion of carbon on wear process. There are four
Conclusion and future challenges
In the present work, deposition techniques, tribological conditions and properties of carbonous materials based coating on different substrate materials especially on steel based alloy are reviewed for piston ring application. Nevertheless, friction and wear behaviour are most interesting points not only for the researchers but also for the industrial purpose. Wear and frictional behaviour have a wide range of application in industries such as piston ring, ball bearing, and wind sheet wipers.
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