By: Dominik Hawelka
Friction creates a loss of energy and reduces component lifetime. According to the scientific community concerned with friction, wear and wear protection the overall costs related to these issues amount to 4 % of the Gross National Product of industrial countries, a staggering sum. Despite the fact that wear protection coatings are already deployed to improve the life-time of highly stressed components, limiting costs due to tribological loss mechanisms poses a great challenge in many industrial sectors. In particular, within the automobile sector, a high throughput of parts needs to be protected every year. As a consequence there is a strong demand for low-cost production processes for wear protection coatings.