Processing the Inner Surfaces of Hollow Ceramic Samples with the Use of Fast Argon Atom Beams

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The adhesion of ceramic coating deposited by a sputtering on the surface of cylindrical substrates was studied and good adhesion was derived.  My comments are as follows.

1. 1. Introduction : Common method to get good adhesion of deposited films are metal under coatings by sputtering. It must be described why you didn’t use common under coating to get good adhesion.
2. 2. Materials and Methods : The characterization methods such as surface profile,

Hardness and adhesion of the surfaces must be described in this section.

3. L120 : Figure 3 is not needed. The information of samples was written in the text.
4. L206 : Figure 6 is not referred in the text and not needed in the manuscript.
5. The numbers of figures 7, 8 and 9 are wrong.
6. L292 : Y-axis is abrasion volume but the unit is micrometers. It must be cubic-micrometers as shown in formula in L287.
7. L297-303 : The most important results are these paragraphs. You wrote the critical load of 18 N. Comparison is needed to say good.

Author Response

The adhesion of ceramic coating deposited by a sputtering on the surface of cylindrical substrates was studied and good adhesion was derived.  My comments are as follows.

 

1. Introduction : Common method to get good adhesion of deposited films are metal under coatings by sputtering. It must be described why you didn’t use common under coating to get good adhesion.

You are perfectly right. When you magnetron sputter a coating on a metal substrate, application of a minus 80 V bias voltage to the substrate ensures a fairly good adhesion. It is due to mixing of atoms on the surface. In the case of a dielectric substrate, it is impossible to apply bias voltage to accelerate ions from the discharge plasma and beam sources or metal sublayers must be used. In our study, we had a beam source and we used it to remove the defective surface layer, polish the surface and assist coating application.

 

2. Materials and Methods : The characterization methods such as surface profile, hardness and adhesion of the surfaces must be described in this section.

You are perfectly right. In the revised manuscript we added in this section a special paragraph “2.2. Instruments for Characterization of the Samples”. The use of methods for characterization of the processed samples we described in the section Results.

 

3. L120 : Figure 3 is not needed. The information of samples was written in the text.

On your advice, we have removed Figure 3.

 

4. L206 : Figure 6 is not referred in the text and not needed in the manuscript.

On your advice we have removed Figure 6.

 

5. The numbers of figures 7, 8 and 9 are wrong.

In the revised manuscript we corrected the numbers of all figures.

 

6. L292 : Y-axis is abrasion volume but the unit is micrometers. It must be cubic-micrometers as shown in formula in L287.

On your advice we have changed in Figure 7 the unit to cubic-micrometers.

 

7. L297-303 : The most important results are these paragraphs. You wrote the critical load of 18 N. Comparison is needed to say good.

In the revised manuscript we compared our result with the first critical loads of TiN coatings applied to flat WC substrates, they never exceeded 14 N.

 

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors present a method for cleaning and coating hollow cylindrical interior surfaces. The data are interesting, but their presentation requires improvement.

1) What is the purpose and novelty of the presented work?

2) In the experimental section, the authors did not specify the target material. The reviewer only learned of this in Section 3, from Figure 3.

3) In Section 2, the authors did not present methods for characterization of the processed samples.

4) The coating thickness data is very poorly presented. Why is thickness data only presented for Si₃N₄, and abrasive volume data only for ZO₂ (what is this? Fig. 9).

5) On what basis did the authors draw conclusion 3?

The comments provided do not reduce the level of the work but allow readers to better understand the presented results.

Author Response

The authors present a method for cleaning and coating hollow cylindrical interior surfaces. The data are interesting, but their presentation requires improvement.

1) What is the purpose and novelty of the presented work?

The goal of our work is to increase the wear resistance and service life of ceramic products with complex shapes. In the case of metal products, wear-resistant coatings made of TiN, TiAlN, TiB₂, etc. can increase service life by 3 times or more. There is no such effect for ceramic products. The cause is a 2-4-µm-thick defective surface layer formed as a result of diamond grinding during the manufacture of the product. To increase the service life of ceramic products, it is necessary to remove the defective surface layer before applying the coating.

The novelty of our work lies in the use of a ribbon beam of fast argon atoms to treat the internal and external surfaces of ceramic products in order to remove the surface layer and polish the surface, and then to assist the application of the coating.

2) In the experimental section, the authors did not specify the target material. The reviewer only learned of this in Section 3, from Figure 3.

In the revised manuscript we specified the target material (TiB₂) in Section 2 (line 80).

3) In Section 2, the authors did not present methods for characterization of the processed samples.

The use of methods for characterization of the processed samples we described in Section 3. In the revised manuscript we added in Section 2 a special paragraph “2.2. Instruments for Characterization of the Samples”.  

4) The coating thickness data is very poorly presented. Why is thickness data only presented for Si₃N₄, and abrasive volume data only for ZrO₂ (what is this?).

In the revised manuscript we added in Figure 7 the abrasive volume data for Si₃N₄ and Al₂O₃. As to the thickness data, after obtaining it for a sample made of silicon nitride, similar measurements were carried out on two other samples of aluminum oxide and zirconium oxide. The results were identical to those obtained for the silicon nitride sample. This does not allow the thickness data for all three ceramic materials to be presented in one Figure 6 due to their overlapping.

5) On what basis did the authors draw conclusion 3?

This is on the base of the results obtained: improved coating adhesion and a reduction in abrasive wear approximately by three times.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Having reviewed the revised manuscript, I confirm that the necessary corrections have been made. I consider it acceptable for publication in its current form.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors took into account all the reviewer's comments.