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Physical vapour deposition (PVD) techniques used for the application of advanced surface engineering materials have been developed over many years, but only in about the last 10 years has the unbalanced magnetron sputtering (UBMS) PVD technique been developed and emerged as one of the most promising techniques for depositing reliable and high quality films used in industrial production. Hard coatings have been studied for many years for the purpose of improving the performance of various tools, mechanical parts, and engineering components. The most studied binary hard coatings (such as stoichiometric titanium nitrides and titanium carbides) and the ternary hard coating (such as titanium carbonitride) have been developed for wear resistance for many years. Although many investigations have been made into the production of coatings with stoichiometric phases, it is both scientifically and commercially interesting to investigate the production and reproducibility of the pure titanium sub-nitride Ti2N films. The first results in chapter 5 describe work carried out to investigate the effect of nitrogen and carbon concentration within the films and was a prelude to the main activity of the development of Ti2N films using commercial conditions. The work for Ti2N was carried out without substrate rotation in the UBMS coating process. The static deposition processes were studied to give a better understanding of the effect of partial pressures on the compositions of the Ti-N films. The phase development as a function of the composition of the films was investigated. The main contribution during this procedure was to achieve a suitable range of nitrogen partial pressure by which the films containing pure Ti2N phase were produced using a UBMS deposition technique. The nitrogen content of the film was very sensitive to variation in nitrogen partial pressure and the nitrogen concentration influenced the phases developed in the films. The reproducibility of the pure Ti2N phase was also discussed in this initial work. A series of extensive experiments were conducted to investigate the formation of Ti2N phase in the UBMS deposition processes using one to three fold rotations. The nitrogen partial pressure of the deposition process was basically determined from the results of the initial work. The effect of substrate rotation on the film composition during processing was studied. In general the film deposited using substrate rotation consisted of different composition using the same chamber condition in one process in which the nitrogen content of the coating increased from one fold rotation to three fold rotation. The film containing dominant eTi2N phase could be produced on a sample using three fold rotation in a process whilst the multiphase compositions (aTiN0.3 + eTi2N) were developed on the sample using the one and two fold rotations in the same process. Characteristics of the eTi2N films and the films containing multiphase compositions were investigated using transmission electron microscopy (TEM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), glow discharge optical emission spectrometer (GDOES), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and a variety of mechanical testing instruments. The eTi2N films have very smooth surface, very dense and fine columnar structure, relatively high hardness, and excellent adhesion with the substrate. The drilling tests using coated high speed steel drills compared the coatings containing eTi2N phase with those containing a single TiN phase and showed excellent wear resistant results.6.

>Magister Scientiae - MSc / In this thesis we report on the deposition of silicon nanostructures using a 3-zone thermal chemical vapour deposition process at atmospheric pressure. Nickel and gold thin films, deposited by DC sputtering on crystalline silicon substrates, were used as the catalyst material required for vapour-solid-liquid growth mechanism of the Si nanostructures. The core of this work is centred around the effect of catalyst type, substrate temperature and the source-to-substrate distance on the structural and optical properties of the resultant Si nanostructures, using argon as the carrier gas and Si powder as the source. The morphology and internal structure of the Si nanostructures was probed by using high resolution scanning and transmission electron microscopy, respectively. The crystallinity was measured by x-ray diffraction and the high resolution transmission electron microscopy. For composition and elemental analysis, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy was used to quantify the bonding configuration, while electron energy-loss spectroscopy in conjunction with electron dispersion spectroscopy reveals the composition. Photoluminescence and UV-visible spectroscopy was used to extract the emission and reflection properties of the synthesized nanostructures.

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