One of the most promising physical methods for coating deposition is the High-Power Impulse Magnetron Sputtering (HiPIMS) technology, a variation of magnetron sputtering that allows for denser and harder films due to the application of high-intensity power pulses with very short duration in the range of a few microseconds to increase plasma density. Hardness, fracture toughness, tribological and corrosion behavior of the coatings can be further designed using nanostructures.

In the present work, the coating architecture of Cr-Y-N multilayers was systematically modified to provide superior hardness and wear resistance . To this end, a novel methodology that introduces a progressive substrate movement in front of the target during sputtering with alternating nitrogen flow is proposed. Misorientation gradients were superimposed to the multilayers by growing with alternating nitrogen flow rates between 50 and 10 sccm. The misorientation gradients were generated using progressive periods of oscillation: none, ±5, ±10, ±15, ±20 and ±25 degrees in fron of a CrY target. Coating morphology, preferential orientation of grain growth and the distributions of nitrogen and yttrium across the multilayers are discussed based on scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, X-ray diffractometry, residual stress analyses, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, instrumented nanohardness and wear resistance.