Piston ring

Abstract

Disclosed is a piston ring having a substrate to which a wear resistant coating is applied that includes at least one first element with a melting point Tm>760° C. The wear resistant coating contains at least one second element with a melting point Tm>760° C. The wear resistant coating also includes droplets which have a diameter and which contain at least the first element, where at least 90% of the droplets have a value 1 μm≤D≤10 μm. In the method for producing a wear resistant coating using an arc evaporation techniques, the target material includes at least one first element with a melting point Tm>760° C. and at least one second element with a melting point Tm>760° C., wherein the quantity of the second material contained in the target material is such that the melting point Tm of the target material >1000° C.

What is claimed is: 
     
         1 . A method for producing a wear protection layer having droplets on a substrate of a piston ring by means of an arc evaporation method with at least one target, which has a target material, which is vaporized, and is deposited in a gas atmosphere from a reactive gas on the substrate, wherein the target material has at least one first element having a melting point T m ≤700° C. and at least one second element having a melting point T m >760° C., wherein the second element is contained in a quantity in the target material such that the melting point T m  of the target material is T m ≥1000° C. 
     
     
         2 . The method according to  claim 1 , wherein the arc evaporation method is a cathodic arc evaporation method. 
     
     
         3 . The method according to  claim 1  wherein aluminum, magnesium, zinc, tellurium, thallium, tin, bismuth, or sulfur is used as the first element. 
     
     
         4 . The method according to  claim 1 , wherein titanium, vanadium, chromium, zirconium, niobium, molybdenum, hafnium, tantalum, tungsten, iron, silicon, or cerium is used as the second element. 
     
     
         5 . The method according to  claim 1 , wherein a target material is used, in which the proportion of the second element is 1 to 90 wt.-%. 
     
     
         6 . The method according to  claim 1 , wherein nitrogen is used as the reactive gas. 
     
     
         7 . The method according to  claim 1 , wherein the pressure of the reactive gas is set to 1 to 10 Pa. 
     
     
         8 . The method according to  claim 1 , wherein a vaporizer current is set to 40 to 200 A. 
     
     
         9 . The method according to  claim 1 , wherein a bias voltage is set to 5 to 200 V. 
     
     
         10 . The method according to  claim 1 , wherein a target having 40 to 50 wt.-% Ti and the remainder Al is used.