Improved Adhesion and Tribological Properties of AlTiN-TiSiN Coatings Deposited by DCMS and HiPIMS on Nitrided Tool Steels

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you very much for your interesting paper.
Since the effects of the duplex treatment were investigated in detail, this paper is thought to be meaningful.
However, since there are some points which should be revised in this paper, I would like to ask you to revise this paper with taking account of the following comments.
1)    There is no information on DCMS. Please show what DCMS stands for.
2)    We can understand that the duplex treatment means PVD/ nitriding duplex treatment according to the main text. However, the explanation on the duplex treatment is mandatory. Please show the definition of “duplex”.
3)    “Tiempo” is not English. Please replace “Tiempo” with “Time” in Fig.8.
4)    (p.15, l.428) Please replace “test thar” with “test that”.
5)    (p.15, l.428) According to your explanation, the tests were carried out at different track radii. However, since the rotation speed increased with increasing track radius, the testing condition was varied by the track radius. Don’t you need to take account of the influence of the rotation speed?
That is all.
I would very much appreciate your contribution.

Author Response

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Reviewer 2 Report

REVIEW

on article

 

Improved adhesion and tribological properties of AlTiN-TiSiN coatings deposited by DCMS and HiPIMS on nitrided tools steels

Adrián Claver, Jesús J. Ranfulfe, José F. Palacio, Jonathan Fernández de Ara, Eluxka Almandoz, Francesc Montalá, Carles Colominas, Victor Cot and Jose A. García

SUMMARY

Ti-Al-N coatings are widely used in industry as an alternative to TiN coatings in order to improve the mechanical properties of the surface. The main advantages of Ti-Al-N coatings include better oxidation resistance than TiN, increased hardness, wear resistance, stability of mechanical properties when operating at elevated temperatures. The main areas of application of Ti-Al-N coatings are wear-resistant protective coatings on cutting tools for high-speed and dry cutting, diffusion coatings for microelectronic objects, coatings on elements of pressing equipment, casting rolls, aircraft engine parts, gas turbines, compressors, and others.

Nevertheless, improving the composition of coatings, the technology of their application, and increasing the service life of parts with coatings is an important scientific problem and is of great practical interest. From this point of view, the article is interesting and can attract the attention of readers.

The reference list comprises 73 sources.

However, there are shortcomings and ambiguities that need to be corrected.

 

COMMENTS.

1. The authors must redo the Abstract and bring it in compliance with the requirements of the Coatings journal. I recommend highlighting the scientific problem (Background). The scientific novelty is not indicated. Editors strongly encourage authors to use the following style of structured abstracts, but without headings: (1) Background: Place the question addressed in a broad context and highlight the purpose of the study; (2) Methods: Describe briefly the main methods or treatments applied; (3) Results: Summarize the article's main findings; and (4) Conclusions: Indicate the main conclusions or interpretations. The abstract should be an objective representation of the article.
2. English needs careful proofreading. Please, revise the entire text.
3. Line 169. "... perpendicular cracks on the bottom of the track". Would you please rephrase or give a scheme?
4. Line 100. "In other hand...". Better "On other hands" or "On another hand".
5. Line 244. “fot” is a typo.
6. Line 347. “…propagation” not “…propagations”.
7. Line 534. Instead of "... combining" there should be "...by combining".
8. Line 557. "...this coatings". It should be "...these coatings".
9. Line 560. "...this steels". It should be "...these steels".
10. Figure 4. I recommend explaining the left and right figures and "discharge" change to "unloading".
11. The unit of the CPRs parameter is N², which does not correlate with the layer thickness or the length of the crack (scratch). Looks dubiously.
12. Figure 8. It is necessary to correct the labels to the ordinate axis.
13. I recommend that the authors in the Discussion section compare the results obtained by authors with other researchers' data and give a deep analysis of the results obtained.

 

In general, the article is devoted to an interesting and urgent problem of studying the adhesion and tribological properties of AlTiN-TiSiN coatings applied by DCMS and HiPIMS methods on nitrided tool steels. The article makes a good impression. However, there are many corrections, so I recommend the article for publication after significant corrections.

Author Response

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Reviewer 3 Report

The authors present a study of the mechanical and tribological properties of duplex treatments formed by gas nitriding and hard coatings deposited by magnetron sputtering techniques have been studied. AlTiN-TiSiN coating was deposited by combined DC Magnetron Sputtering and High-Power Impulse Magnetron Sputtering after gas nitriding pre-treatment on 1.2379 and Vanadis 4 tools steels. PVD coated sample was used as reference. These studies are interesting but, in my opinion the result are not consolidate by scientific explanations and enough physical theoretical support. The results of this study can be better consolidating by the mathematics simulations. I am not sure that the results are reproducible experimental. 

1. The motivation of this research is not clear enough. Better explanation is expected in the introduction to highlight to reason why the authors select these material and what's their potential advantage among the others already reported.
2. More in-depth experimental analyses and discussions are necessary about fabrications and investigations of layers. There any surface treatment step before investigations? 
3. Some SEM morphology analyses are done to be compared by simulations?
 
Hope my suggestions are helpful.
Best regards

Author Response

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Reviewer 4 Report

The article is interesting and has promising results for the targeted application. Also, it is generally well written and has qualitative figures and tables.

Please, take into consideration the following minor remarks:

1. It is very important to mention in the introduction the novelty of the study.
2. Please mention the details about the reagents and devices used in the study (e.g. manufacturer).
3. The section Discussion must include comparisons with other studies from the literature.

Author Response

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Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you very much for your revision.

Since this paper was properly revised along the reviewers' comments, this paper is thought to be publishable.

I would very much appreciate your contribution.

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors took all my comments into account and made corrections in the text of the article. As a result, the paper looks much better. 

I ask the authors in the description of Figure 4 to add a) and b) for the left and right figures and give their explanations in the Figure caption.