Investigation of the adhesion properties of Ti, TiN and (Ti, Cr, Al)N layers successively deposited on the WC$_{92}$–Co$_8$ hard alloy surface

The energy of a three-layer coating on the surface of a hard alloy based on tungsten carbide WC$_{92}$–Co$_8$ (technical name VK8) has been studied using computer simulation methods of density functional theory and pseudopotentials. The first layer is titanium; the second layer is titanium nitride; the third layer is a composite nitride (Ti, Cr, Al)N. The dependence of the energy of adhesion of titanium to the WC and Co surfaces on the thickness of the deposited titanium layer (from one to three atomic layers) has been studied. The adhesion energy of titanium nitride to the pre-deposited titanium layer is calculated. For four variants of the structure of the compound (Ti, Cr, Al)N, the adhesion energy of this compound to the TiN surface was calculated.