Formation and properties of cubic boron nitride films on tungsten carbide by plasma chemical vapor deposition

Boron nitride (BN) films could be deposited on tungsten carbide (WC) using the plasma chemical vapor deposition (CVD) technique. The deposited films are characterized by infrared reflectance polarization spectroscopy, transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and transmission electron diffraction (TED). The BN films directly deposited on WC were a mixture of cubic and hexagonal phases. However, the predominant films in the cubic phase were only formed with use of a thin buffer layer of boron (B) films. The grain size was estimated to be about 100 A from images of TEM and TED patterns.