The Use of STM for Investigation of Surface Relief in Respect to Tribologic Properties of DLC Coatings

The surface relief is one of the main factors defining the trybological properties of friction pairs, especially in the case of diamond and diamond like carbon (DLC) coatings. Even such thin as 10 - 100 nm coating can considerably increase the wear resistance and drastically reduce the friction coefficient of friction pairs. The most convenient techniques for investigation microrelief effect on trybologyc properties of thin films seems to be the scanning tunneling microscopy (STM). The microrelief was changed by surface bombardment with 1 keV ions of O, Ar and N. The fiction coefficients was found to depend upon ion bombardment time and the minimal value could be achieved. The STM studies showed that namely at this time the surface relief was the most smooth. For the coatings in the initial state the surface relief was about 15 - 20 nm and in the state with minimal friction coefficient - about 1.5 - 3 nm