Hard and Highly Adhesive AlMgB₁₄ Coatings RF Sputtered on Tungsten Carbide and High-Speed Steel

We report a new industrial application of aluminum magnesium boride AlMgB₁₄ (BAM) coatings to enhance the hardness of tungsten carbide ceramic (WC-Co) and high-speed steel tools. BAM films were deposited by RF magnetron sputtering of a single dense stoichiometric ceramic target onto commercial WC-Co turning inserts and R6M5 steel drill bits. High target sputtering power and sufficiently short target-to-substrate distance were found to be critical processing conditions. Very smooth (6.6 nm RMS surface roughness onto Si wafers) and hard AlMgB₁₄ coatings enhance the hardness of WC-Co inserts and high-speed R6M5 steel by a factor of two and three, respectively. Complete coating spallation failure occurred at a scratch adhesion strength of 18 N. High work of adhesion and low friction coefficient, estimated for BAM onto drill bits, was as high as 64 J/m² and as low as 0.07, respectively, more than twice the surpass characteristics of N-doped diamond-like carbon (DLC) films deposited onto nitride high-speed W6Mo5Cr4V2 steel.