In both types of applications, corrosion resistance and wear resistance are of crucial importance.
Additional requirements place even more stringent conditions on the deposition processes.
For instance, the ability to deposit hard coatings on low melting point materials becomes of increasing importance. Coatings for cutting and forming must perform under extreme conditions. Tooling trends toward dry processes and a single finishing operation necessitate ultra-resistant coatings with respect to thermochemical stability, hardness, and fracture toughness. The research project intends to establish prediction bases for the properties of such hard and resistant coatings in relation with their specific electronic structure, morphology and solid state chemistry. It includes a careful investigation of the application process parameters, of the physical deposition and growth parameters, of the chemical composition, and of the structure and morphology at several resolution scales.