Abstract
Microscopic bending tests were performed to measure mechanical strength of hard coatings produced by physical vapor deposition. The results were analyzed on the basis of Weibull statistics and compared with those obtained with chemically vapor deposited diamond coatings. It was clearly found that the scatter of strength of a physically vapor deposited TiN coating was much larger than that of a chemically vapor deposited diamond coating. It was speculated that significantly large defects could be introduced in the PVD process.
