New Cost Effective Titanium Based Protective and Decorative Coatings by Ion Plating Plasma Assisted IPPA

The activity aiming to replace galvanic treatments by vacuum processes is based on the effort to reduce the production costs and to set-up new decorative effects impossible to be galvanically realised because the use of dielectric materials. This work describes cost effective metal-oxide and oxide-metal-oxide decorative coatings based on the use of titanium as basic material deposited by Ion Plating Plasma Assisted from Reactive Magnetron Sputtering source. A new multilayer protective and decorative structure, based on the use of titanium and titanium oxides is also presented. The protective effect against aggressive environment is obtained by alternating layers of metal and metal-oxide mixture that exhibit good barrier properties because its microstructure. The decorative effect is obtained with a final couple of titanium and titanium dioxide or, on transparent substrates, with a titanium dioxide - titanium -titanium dioxide structure providing different colour effects on the two faces. Cost effectiveness is obtained by reducing dramatically the process requirements and duration, by simplifying the preparation and cleaning phase, reducing the pump-down time and depositing at room temperature. The treatments were realised and characterised on aluminium, stainless steel and glass substrates.