Titanium advance

Titanium nitride is commercially important as a wear-resistant coating for drills and other machine machine tools. However, existing processes for depositing coatings of the material require temperatures of at least 500 degrees Centigrade.

Now researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Thin Films and Surface Engineering in Hamburg have developed a process that works at temperatures as low as 100 degrees Centigrade, which allows the coating to be used in micro- electronics and for hardening temperature-sensitive materials such as plastics.