Calibration standards for composition-depth profiles of non-stoichiometric titanium nitride coatings

Five different TiN_x coatings have been deposited on steel substrates by reactive magnetron sputtering. A quantitative analysis was carried out in two ways. The coatings were initially analysed by GDOS and after removing the coatings from the substrates and digesting the TiN_x powder, nitrogen was quantified by the Kjeldahl technique and titanium by AAS. A comparison of the results shows that AAS and Kjeldahl results correlate very well, whereas GDOS results deviate from these two methods systematically.