Composition design and process optimization of refractory boride coatings based on high-throughput preparation and machine learning
摘要
Developing high-performance coatings is highly desirable; however, the efficiency of the traditional trial-and-error method is often insufficient, particularly when designing multi-component coatings with a broad compositional range. Here, a high-throughput preparation method combined with machine learning is proposed to accelerate the design of refractory boride coating with complex compositions. A database was firstly constructed based on 48 groups of compositions and hardness detected in high-throughput deposited coating via NbB, WB, and MoB co-sputtering. Five features were filtered as key features related to hardness, and corresponding regression models were applied to train and test the set which also have been cross validated by Leave-One-Out Cross-Validation. Then, the relationship between the filtered factors and hardness was described by developing a Partial Dependence Plot model to reveal the composition-dependent hardness of boride coatings. As an illustrative example, we successfully predicted an Nb-Mo-W-B boride coating with a high hardness of 20.39 GPa, characterized by the composition Nb15Mo33W52B100. Subsequently, the predicted optimal composition was used to sinter a target to sputter a coating which exhibits a hardness of 20.7 GPa, agreeing well with the predicted value. Our results show the high-efficiency and powerful of Machine Learning model combined with High-Throughput Experiment to accurately predict hardness of multi-component coatings.