Protective hard ceramic coatings deposited via High Power Impulse Magnetron Sputtering

Our specific research area is protective coatings. Nowadays research is focused on advanced materials, those materials for mechanical components and tools that must have increasingly high performance in order to work in extreme conditions. To obtain these properties, the surface plays a decisive role (for example with regard to wear resistance, hardness, corrosion resistance, fatigue resistance, etc.). Therefore, the strategy followed by us is to decouple the bulk properties from the surface properties by means of surface engineering techniques and in particular the deposition of protective coatings. This allows to design materials that have different and localized specific properties where they are most needed. Thus it is possible to design a mechanical piece by maximizing the toughness and resilience of the bulk while simultaneously hardening the surface enormously.