Fatigue characteristics of ferroelectric $Pb(Zr,Ti)O_3$ (PZT) based capacitors through donor doping is reported in this paper. La substitution up to 10% were carried out to study systematically the fatigue behaviors of epitaxial ferroelectric capacitors grown on Si using $(Ti_{0.9}Al_{0.1})N/Pt$ conducting barrier composite. Ferroelectric capacitors substituted with 10% La show sufficient low voltage switched polarization and fatigue free performance. Systematic decrease in the tetragonality of the ferroelectric phase (i.e., c/a ratio) results in the corresponding reduction in coercive voltage, sufficient remnant polarization at 1.5-3V, and good fatigue property.

TiCN thin films were deposited on tool steels at $510^{\circ}C$ by PECVD from a $TiCl_4+N_2+CH_4+H_2+Ar$ gaseous mixture. The microstructures and preferred orientation were investigated. The micro-scratch tests were performed using a system equipped with an acoustic emission sensor. Critical loads were determined to evaluate the adhesion of TiCN to substrate. The influences of the microstructures of substrates, double layered coatings, and coatings after nitriding(duplex coating) were investigated. The experimental results showed that the microstructures of substrates and double layered coating did not affect the critical loads considerably. By the duplex coating, critical loads were not always increased. In some cases, duplex coatings decreased critical loads significantly despite of absence of black layer. In this study, we tried to relate the results of scratch test to the residual stress analysis. Nitriding before the coating reduces the tensile residual stress in the film, which gives rise to low critical load in scratch test.

Shore hardness test was developed in 1906 to overcome the limit of Brinell hardness test. However, the detailed requirements on the tester was not clearly specified except the scale, i.e., 100 HS for high carbon steel and 10 HS for soft brass. As a result, the shore hardness was used for quite long time without well established standards. For the establishment of hardness standards, standard tester, standard procedure, and standard hardness block must be provided. So far the standard of Shore hardness was maintained by correlating Shore hardness scale to Vickers hardness through converting equation. This is the so called converted Shore hardness and it is not the true Shore hardness standard strictly. In this paper, the possibility of establishing Shore hardness standard based on the Shore standard hardness tester is reported.

During warm and hot forging process of steels or aluminum alloys, dies are subject to early fracture, severe wear by thermo-mechanical stress. Especially, during the die-casting of aluminum alloys, the service life of dies is incredibly lowered. In this study we investigated the characteristics of TiBN films produced by PECVD. TiBN films showed very high hardness, excellent wear resistance, which could enhance the service life of die parts such as forging punch, die casting core pin successfully.