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Concept
Titanium nitride
Summary
Titanium nitride (TiN; sometimes known as Tinite) is an extremely hard ceramic material, often used as a physical vapor deposition (PVD) coating on titanium alloys, steel, carbide, and aluminium components to improve the substrate's surface properties.
Applied as a thin coating, TiN is used to harden and protect cutting and sliding surfaces, for decorative purposes (for its golden appearance), and as a non-toxic exterior for medical implants. In most applications a coating of less than is applied.
TiN has a Vickers hardness of 1800–2100, hardness of 31 ± 4 GPa, a modulus of elasticity of 550 ± 50 GPa, a thermal expansion coefficient of 9.35 K−1, and a superconducting transition temperature of 5.6 K.
TiN will oxidize at 800 °C in a normal atmosphere. TiN has a brown color, and appears gold when applied as a coating. It is chemically stable at 20 °C, according to laboratory tests, but can be slowly attacked by concentrated acid solutions with rising temperatures.
Depending on the substrate material and surface finish, TiN will have a coefficient of friction ranging from 0.4 to 0.9 against another TiN surface (non-lubricated). The typical TiN formation has a crystal structure of NaCl-type with a roughly 1:1 stoichiometry; TiNx compounds with x ranging from 0.6 to 1.2 are, however, thermodynamically stable.
TiN becomes superconducting at cryogenic temperatures, with critical temperature up to 6.0 K for single crystals. Superconductivity in thin-film TiN has been studied extensively, with the superconducting properties strongly varying depending on sample preparation, up to complete suppression of superconductivity at a superconductor-insulator transition. A thin film of TiN was chilled to near absolute zero, converting it into the first known superinsulator, with resistance suddenly increasing by a factor of 100,000.
Osbornite is a very rare natural form of titanium nitride, found almost exclusively in meteorites.
A well-known use for TiN coating is for edge retention and corrosion resistance on machine tooling, such as drill bits and milling cutters, often improving their lifetime by a factor of three or more.
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