Improvement of the mechanical and tribological behaviors by Ti-C interlayer for diamond-like carbon films on nitrile butadiene rubber

To improve the mechanical and tribological properties of diamond-like carbon (DLC) film on nitrile butadiene rubber, the DLC/Ti-C bilayer films are fabricated by a dual-target magnetron sputtering method. The morphological characterization results indicate that the roughness of DLC/Ti-C first decreases and then increases slightly with the increase of Ti content and surface roughness of all modified samples is lower than that of nitrile butadiene rubber (NBR). Raman spectra show that the change of Ti content in the Ti-C interlayer has no effect on the ratio of sp2 to sp3 bonds of surface DLC film. The nanoindentation results show that the Ti content significantly affects the hardness, Young’s modulus, hrex/hmax and elastic recovery (%). Notably, the DLC/Ti-C films with a Ti content of 12.32 ∼ 14.77 at. % show the lowest coefficient of friction (CoF, 0.1 ∼ 0.2) and superior wear resistance due to the increased transformation of sp2 into sp3 in the films. This study unravels that the DLC films' superior mechanical and tribologic performance could be realized by regulating the Ti content in the Ti-C interlayer.