Titanium-Silicon PVD-Coatings

Titanium (Ti) thin films are already well established in the coating industry as a protective layer with high hardness and good phase stability. Titanium(Ti)-coatings are very common in the tooling industry and one big advantage is the price point. Titanium coatings are amoung the cheapest thin film coatings on the market, therefore you get a very good price-performance ratio with your titanium coating. The big disadvantage of Titanium thin films is the oxidation above 600 °C. Oxidation drastically deterioates the mechanical properties of any coating. 

 Adding Silicon (Si) to titanium (Ti), the coating shows a greatly improved oxidation resistance at high temperatures. Cutting tools with a TiSi-coating can be also applied in cutting scenarios without coolant, making it the perfect match for high performance machining applications.

Many titanium coatings are alloyed with 10 at%, 20 at% or up to 34 at% silicon. The hardness and plastic deformation of the Titanium-Silicon (TiSi) coatings increase with the increase of the Silicone (Si)-content. TiSiN layers can be deployed by ractive magnetron sputtering or arc evaporation. 

The quality of any coating highly depends on the target and cathode. All our targets and cathodes are produced with a powder metallurgical manufacturing process, therefore the quality of our metall powders is key for a consistnt quality. Since we produce most of our targets in Germany, we have a very good control over the process and the powder quality. 

We can supply Titanium-Silicon (TiSi) targets and cathodes in any shape, size and material combination. TiSi 66/34 at% (Ti34Si) targets in the size 500x88x10 mm we would be able to supply as a mixed target.