Abstract
In mechanical engineering there is an increasing demand for lightweight design and materials engineering from the view points of weight reduction, reduction of consumed energy and upgrading of performance. One major drawback of light metal alloys is their poor tribological properties concerning friction and wear under high surface loadings. This study focuses on the development of combined coatings on light metal substrates which show high wear resistance and low friction coefficients under dry sliding conditions. The combined coatings consist of a thermally sprayed ceramic or metallurgical primary coating to provide the wear resistance. Subsequently a coating with dry lubricating ability is deposited to achieve a low friction coefficient, either by application of a lubricant lacquer containing microscale solid lubricant particles (e.g. PTFE, MoS2), by cathode sputtering of MoS2 or by deposition of pure carbon containing coatings (a-C:H) by plasma assisted CVD.
