Study on the thermal stability of Ti(C,O,N) decorative coatings

Abstract

This work reports on the study of thermal stability of dark decorative Ti(C,O,N) thin films produced by reactive magnetron sputtering, from a pure titanium target, using acetylene and an oxygen and nitrogen mixture as reactive gases. The thermal resistance and evolution of structural and physical properties were studied by performing annealing experiments at three different temperatures: 800, 900 and 1 000 ºC. In order to study the effect of the thermal treatments on the properties of the films, mainly the physical ones (where surface colourations will deserve particular importance), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Raman spectroscopy (RS) were used. The optical properties of the films were obtained by reflectance experiments, in visible region, and the colour of the films is expressed in the CIE 1976 L a b colour space.