Nanostructural Coatings: “Chessboard” Effect

V. E. Panin, V. P. Sergeev

Despite impressive advances achieved in the field of “nanomaterial science,” there are severe difficulties on the way of creating voluminous nanostructural materials, their welded joints, and complex configurations. No technologies are available for creating a uniform nanostructure in large volumes of material; there is a problem to preserve the nanostructure in welded joints and a problem related to a drastic decrease in the strength of nanostructural materials in zones of local overloading.

However, there is an approach to solving these problems that involves special nanostructuring of only surface layers of structural materials. The scientific basis for such technologies was developed at the Institute of Strength Physics and Material Sciences of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences; the necessary equipment was also designed there. This became possible owing to a discovery made in studying the formation of nanostructures in multilayer surface layers and coatings. The essence of this discovery is as follows. At the interface of two media, a special regular structure is formed; the character and parameters of this structure are responsible for new properties acquired by the sample tested.

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