The Co-Cr-Mo alloy is extensively used for tribological applications, including orthopaedic components in total joint replacements. High quality diamond-like carbon (DLC) coatings on metal/alloy substrates are of great interest as they are able to protect them from severe wear and thus prolong the life span of the component. Since the roughness of the metal/alloy varies depending on the applications, a study has been carried out to investigate the effect of substrate surface roughness on the microstructure, sliding life, wear-resistance, coefficient of friction, adhension and hardness of DLC coatings prepared on Co-Cr-Mo alloy substrates under the same deposition condition.

The microstructure of the films studied using Raman spectroscopy suggests that the film prepared on a smoother surface contains slightly higher fraction of sp³ bonded carbon atoms. The characterization using a pin-on-disk tribometer reveals that, the film prepared on the roughest sample (Ra ~ 0.06 μm) exhibits a very short life span of about 20 cycles compared to the film that is prepared on a relatively smoother surface (Ra ~ 0.02 μm), which exhibits a life span of about 340,000 cycles. In order to investigate the origin of this improved property of the DLC film on the smoother surface, adhesive strength and hardness of the films were studied by using a micro-scratch tester and a Nano-indenter, respectively. The results suggest that the film prepared on the smoother surface exhibits better adhesion (higher critical load) and relatively higher hardness.