Table 1.

Chemical composition of the coatings obtained by ERDA analysis with the corresponding deposition parameters. The average error ranges between 1 and 2% of the presented mean atomic fractions.

Sample	Deposition parameters				N/(C+N)	Elements (mean atomic fraction)
	Bias potential	${\mathbf{f}}_{[{\mathbf{N}}_{\mathbf{2}}]}^{\mathbf{norm}}$	Ar	N2	x	Ta	C	N
	[V]		[sccm]
Ta0.59C0.41	−10	0	20	0	—	0.585	0.415	—
Ta0.51C0.37N0.12	−10	0.05	19	1	0.24	0.514	0.371	0.115
Ta0.47C0.34N0.19a	−75	0.05	19	1	0.36	0.466	0.344	0.190
Ta0.48C0.31N0.21	−10	0.1	18	2	0.40	0.481	0.309	0.210
Ta0.46C0.32N0.22b	−60	0.1	18	2	0.41	0.459	0.320	0.221
Ta0.48C0.27N0.25	−10	0.15	17	3	0.48	0.482	0.270	0.248
Ta0.43C0.29N0.28	−10	0.2	16	4	0.49	0.435	0.288	0.276
Ta0.42C0.27N0.31	−10	0.3	14	6	0.53	0.416	0.275	0.309
Ta0.42C0.22N0.36	−10	0.4	12	8	0.62	0.417	0.222	0.361
Ta0.38C0.20N0.42	−10	0.5	10	10	0.67	0.383	0.203	0.414
Ta0.48N0.52	−10	0.5	10	10	—	0.476	—	0.524

^aFilm was deposited at a heater temperature of 730 °C and power density of 0.75 W/cm².

^bDifferent bias potential was applied to study its effect on thin film morphology and hardness.