Structure and elemental composition of multilayered nanocomposite TiN/ZrN coatings before and after annealing in air

Multilayered TiN/ZrN coatings were deposited using sequential vacuum-arc deposition of Ti and Zr targets in a nitrogen atmosphere. Studies of film's properties were done using various modern methods of analysis, such as XRD, STEM, HRTEM, SIMS. Several samples were annealed in air at the temperature 700°C. All deposited samples were highly polycrystalline with large 7–17 nm crystals. The crystalline planes were ordinated and demonstrated an excellent co-ordinated growth. Concentration of Zr increased after annealing, while Ti and N concentrations decreased due to annealing. Annealing led to 5–10% decreasing of the size of crystallites. Calculated lattice parameters appeared to be a little bit larger in comparison with standard values (1% larger for ZrN and 0.6% larger for TiN) both for as-deposited and annealed samples due to compressive stresses.