Design and production of tungsten-carbide rich coating layers

Ion beam induced mixing (IBM) can be used for making protecting coating layers at room temperature. We have studied the production of tungsten-carbide, having high strength and low friction, by IBM since this material is also a candidate for protective coatings. WC rich layers have been produced by irradiating C/W multilayer of various structures (with individual layer thicknesses from 10 to 20 nm) by noble gases using medium energy projectiles. The resulting alterations of the samples have been measured by Auger electron spectroscopy (AES) depth-profiling. TRIDYN simulations, with some parametrization, were applied to determine the elemental in-depth distribution after IBM; the compound formation was calculated by a simple model. The calculated and measured depth profiles were compared and excellent agreement has been found for a rich dataset differing in layer structures, projectiles, ion fluences and energies. The good agreement in a wide parameter range validates our procedure and allows the design of the WC-rich layers and also enables the significant decrease of the experimental work.