Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2011
TiAlN sputtered coatings have been used with success in high-speed cutting tools in the last few years. However, the adhesive failures of the coatings refrain its application in more severe wear conditions like as high-speed machining. The assumptions for the present research were based on the hypothesis that thin metal interlayers will behave as shear stress sinkers, which could decrease the delamination of the thin films. In the present work, coatings of TiAlN with thin ductile metallic interlayers (Al, Ti, Cu and Ag) were deposited by reactive d.c. magnetron sputtering. Multilayer coatings with aluminum, titanium and silver interlayers achieve higher adhesion values (70N) than TiAlN monolithic coating (40N). Three and five metal ductile layers contribute to an increase of hardness and Young's modulus without change the residual stresses of the monolithic coating. Contrarily, the introduction of copper layers reduces all the studied mechanical properties of the TiAlN monolithic coatings, which are related to the different deformation mechanisms of the ductile interlayers.