Effect of plasma molybdenized buffer layer on adhesive properties of TiN film coated on Ti6Al4V alloy

Highlights: • A molybdenized layer was prepared as a buffer layer under TiN film on Ti6Al4V. • The molybdenized layer can enhance adhesion strength of PVD coatings effectively. • The duplex treated samples increase elastic energy ratio in the impact tests. • The enhancement attributes to the hardness improvement and inverted-S shape elastic modulus profile of the modified layer. - Abstract: Effect of molybdenized buffer layer on adhesion strength of TiN film on Ti6Al4V alloy was investigated. The buffer layer composed of a dense molybdenum deposition layer, a rapid drop zone and a slow fall zone was prepared using double glow plasma surface alloying technique. Scratch tests and low energy repeated impact tests were adopted to comparatively evaluate the duplex treated layers and the single TiN samples. The results show that the critical load was increased from 62 N for the single TiN film to over 100 N for the duplex treated layer. The volume of impact pit, formed in impact tests, of the single TiN samples is 9.15 × 10⁶ μm³, and about 1.5 times than that of the duplex treated samples. The Leeb hardness values reveal that about 70% impact energy was transferred to the single TiN samples to generate permanent deformation, while that was only about 47% for the duplex treated samples. The mechanism of improving adhesion strength is attributed to synergistic effect due to an inverted-S shape elastic modulus distribution produced by the molybdenized layer.