Ion beam analysis of TiN/Ti multilayers deposited by magnetron sputtering

TiN/Ti multilayers, 1.74-9.80 μm thick, were deposited on 304 stainless steel substrates by reactive unbalanced magnetron sputtering. It is known that such multilayers can improve the corrosion resistance of the stainless steel. The titanium layers help to reduce the occurrence of pinholes that arise because of the irregularities in substrate surface, and decrease the porosity of subsequent TiN coatings by improving the layers microstructure. A 1400 keV deuterium beam was used to analyse the samples and combinations of RBS/NRA methods were applied to evaluate the sample spectra. The 14N(d, α1) 12C NR cross sections are well known and were used as way to determine the 14N concentration in the TiNx layers. The corrosion resistance of the layers was studied by means of potentiodynamic polarization in a 0.5 M NaCl solution. The corrosion test demonstrated that the number of TiN/Ti layers and its total thickness determine the corrosion resistance. © 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved