ABSTRACT
In recent years, considerable research has been devoted to the development of hard, thin coatings for tribological and structural applications. Such coatings are applied to enhance both the chemical and the physical properties of the substrate material. The underlying objective of this work has been to optimize the coating/ substrate design to achieve desired properties and a reduction of factors inducing failure. Typical of such factors are abrasive wear, chemical wear, thermal shock, and degradation. In order to facilitate optimization, the characteristics of the substrate/coating materials and their interaction must be understood, particularly in the service environment. Many of these properties are either known or may be calculated and empirically verified. However, factors controlling practical adhesion [1], i.e. the actual energy or force required to debond the coating from the substrate, are poorly understood and difficult to quantify.
