Structural component coated with a hard material and comprising an intermediate layer for improving the adhesive strength of the coating

Structural components that are subject to high stresses, especially caused by wear, can be protected by coating them with a hard material. For metal-cutting tools it is for example known that their wear resistance can be improved by coating them with a hard material. Different thermal expansion coefficients of the substrate material and the coating material and different layer materials in a multilayer coating may produce great stresses. The stress increases as the thickness of the coating increases, thereby increasing the danger of the coating chipping off. In order to solve this problem, the invention proposes an intermediate layer ( 5 ) to be interposed between at least two layers ( 4, 9 ) of the coating ( 3 ), said intermediate layer mainly or exclusively consisting of a material component ( 6, 8 ) of an element of the fourth to eighth subgroup of the fourth and fifth period of the periodic system.