Hardening mechanisms of nanocrystalline Ti–Al–N solid solution films

Abstract Nanocrystalline Ti 1− x Al x N (0≤ x ≤0.41) solid solution films were produced by reactive unbalanced close-field magnetron sputtering. Nanoindentation measurements showed that the hardness of Ti 1− x Al x N films increased monotonously with the content of Al. A calculation based on a semiempirical method revealed that the effect of intrinsic hardening, which arises from the change of the nature of atomic bonding due to the incorporation of Al atoms into TiN lattice, played a negligible role in the observed hardening phenomena. Further analysis revealed that the grain boundary hardening was also very weak and the improvement of hardness of Ti 1− x Al x N films with relatively low content of Al ( x ≤0.33) could be well explained by the Fleischer model of solid solution hardening. However, for Ti 1− x Al x N films with x >0.33, an obvious deviation from the solid solution hardening was observed, probably due to the grain boundary segregation of solutes that might lead to an enhanced effect of grain boundary hardening when the amount of Al is high.