NITROGEN-RICH STAINLESS STEEL THIN FILMS OBTAINED BY MAGNETRON SPUTTERING

Reactive magnetron sputtering is a versatile tool for producing coatings on various substrates also at low temperature. The use of stainless steel targets and different nitrogen-containing plasma mixtures allows to obtain nanostructured coatings consisting of a wide range of single or multiphase layers. In the present study, ferritic and austenitic stainless steels were used as targets and different coatings were deposited by magnetron sputtering varying the relative volumetric nitrogen content in the treatment atmosphere. XPS, XRD and electron microscopy analyses were employed to characterize the obtained samples.