The dependence of technically important properties of wear resistant nitride coatings on chemical composition requires advanced methods of compositional analysis to establish optimized fabrication processes. High spatial resolution and chemical bonding specificity are provided by such techniques as Auger electron spectroscopy (AES) in the form of scanning Auger microscopy (SAM) and x‐ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). A survey is given for the study of reactively sputter deposited Ti–N, Hf–N, and Ti–Al–N coatings on high‐speed steel substrates using point, line, and in‐depth distribution analysis by SAM in conjunction with sputter profiling. Capabilities and limitations of quantitative AES to determine the influence of processing parameters on coating composition are presented. XPS gives additional information on chemical bonding and on quantification. This is particularly important in cases of peak overlapping in Auger spectra (e.g., TiN).
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S. Hofmann (1986) studied this question.