ABSTRACT
In recent years, there has been an overwhelming interest in the production and widespread utilization of multifunctional, nanostructured, and composite coatings by various industries [1-4]. Specifically, increasing demands for greater power density, more compact design, better reliability,
lower fuel and material consumption in numerous advanced tribological systems have increasingly necessitated the use of such coatings to achieve greater performance, longer durability, and higher efficiency. For numerous applications, nanostructured and composite coatings can make a huge positive impact [5-7]. Because of their superior mechanical properties (in particular, superhardness and supertoughness) and high chemical inertness, these coatings can significantly lower friction and wear losses and at the same time increase resistance to fatigue, erosion, and corrosion, which have increasingly become the life-limiting factors for mechanical components in many industrial applications. Such coatings can also provide greater resistance to contact deformation and damage during heavily loaded rolling or rotating contacts [8]. Their isotropic, nanocrystalline structure may provide higher load-carrying capacity, greater fracture toughness, and hence better resistance to crack initiation and growth under both normal and tangential loads [9].
