Sumitomo Electric Industries, Limited

Takashi Yoshida

Makoto Setoyama

Mitsunori Kobayashi

Kazuo Yamagata

Motoyuki Tanaka

Akira Nakayama

Yasuhisa Hashimoto

A coating film which can sufficiently improve the wear resistance of a cutting tool or a wear-resistant tool and which reveals excellent qualities as a wear-resistant or protective film for an electric or electronic part or a sliding or machine part. Such a coating film is in the form of an ultra-thin film laminate comprising at least one nitride or carbonitride of at least one element selected from the group consisting of the elements in the groups IVa, Va and VIa in the periodic table and Al and B and having a cubic crystal structure and having mainly metallic bonding properties, and at least one compound having a crystal structure other than the cubic crystal structure at normal temperature and normal pressure and under equilibrium state and having mainly covalent bonding properties, the at least one nitride or carbonitride and the compound being alternately laminated in the form of layers, each layer of the compound having a thickness of 0.2-50 nm, the laminate having a cubic crystalline X-ray diffraction pattern as a whole.

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Itami, Japan

Takashi Yoshida