Abstract: In order to prolong the life time of gun barrel, a Ta coating was prepared by means of magnetron sputtering technology. The as-deposited coating consists of a body-centered cubic α-Ta and a metastable tetragonal β-Ta,and completely transforms into α-Ta after 3 h vacuum annealing. The hardness, elasticity modulus and friction coefficient of the α-Ta coating were tested by utilizing nanoindentor and friction and wear testing machine. In contrast to the traditional hard chrome coating, the performance of friction and wear of the α-Ta coating was investigated by employing scanning electron microscope (SEM), energy dispersive spectrometer (EDS) and grazing incidence X-ray diffraction (GIXRD) to analyze the microstructure of the coatings. The results indicated that the friction coefficient of the α-Ta coating (0.70—0.80) is slightly lower than that of the hard chrome coating (0.75—0.85), and the wear mechanism of the α-Ta coating is mainly characterized as adherent wear while that of the hard chromium coating is fatigue and adherent one.
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