Improvement of the adhesion of cubic boron nitride films by adding miscellaneous elements

Cubic boron nitride films with miscellaneous added elements, such as Al, C, Si, Ti and V (BN-composite films), were deposited by dual-ion beam sputtering. The films obtained were characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. Also, a nano-indentation method was used to measure the film hardness. Internal stress was estimated by the bending beam method. With increasing the content of the additives, the BN-composite films changed from a cubic to a hexagonal phase. The internal (compressive) stress and hardness decreased from 5.8 and 60 GPa of the pure-cubic boron nitride (cBN) film to lower values, according to the type of additive used. These changes in all cases were influenced by the reduction of the cubic content IcBN due to the additives regardless of the kind of additive