Titanium nitride is an extremely hard ceramic material, often used as a physical vapor deposition (PVD) coating on titanium alloys, steel, carbide, and aluminium components to improve the substrate's surface properties.
Titanium nitride
Dark gray TiCN coating on a Gerber pocketknife
Titanium nitride (TiN) coated punches using cathodic arc deposition technique
A knife with a titanium oxynitride coating
Physical vapor deposition
Physical vapor deposition (PVD), sometimes called physical vapor transport (PVT), describes a variety of vacuum deposition methods which can be used to produce thin films and coatings on substrates including metals, ceramics, glass, and polymers. PVD is characterized by a process in which the material transitions from a condensed phase to a vapor phase and then back to a thin film condensed phase. The most common PVD processes are sputtering and evaporation. PVD is used in the manufacturing of items which require thin films for optical, mechanical, electrical, acoustic or chemical functions. Examples include semiconductor devices such as thin-film solar cells, microelectromechanical devices such as thin film bulk acoustic resonator, aluminized PET film for food packaging and balloons, and titanium nitride coated cutting tools for metalworking. Besides PVD tools for fabrication, special smaller tools used mainly for scientific purposes have been developed.
Inside the plasma-spray physical vapor deposition (PS-PVD) chamber, ceramic powder is introduced into the plasma flame, which vaporizes it and then condenses it on the (cooler) workpiece to form the ceramic coating.
This figure gives a simple illustration of the process of PVD where the desired deposited gas molecules enter the chamber after being condensed, and then are condensed once again onto a thin film, such as the anisotropic glass.