The effect of duty cycle on the mechanical and electrochemical corrosion properties of multilayer CrN/CrAlN coatings produced by cathodic arc evaporation

Multilayer CrN/CrAlN coatings were deposited on the 420-SS by the cathodic arc evaporation system with different duty cycles of bias-voltage. The deposited films were characterized by XRD and FESEM techniques. Mechanical, electrochemical, and surface properties of deposited films were studied by nano-indentation, electrochemical, and AFM analysis. Microstructure investigation confirmed the formation of adhesive and dense nanostructure multilayer film. Increasing the duty cycle led to the decrease in the coating grain size and promoted the hardness to 34.1 ± 4 GPa. A clear reduction of size and distribution of macroparticles was observed by using large repulsive force at a high duty cycle. By increasing the duty cycle, the coating deposition rate was increased from 1.23 to 1.38 µm/h and the surface roughness was decreased from 155 to 70 nm. The lower corrosion current density was obtained for the film applied at the 40% duty cycle (0.59 µA cm−2), which was about 10-order of magnitude less than the substrate.