Environmental sustainability analysis of hard coating TiN chemical vapor deposition by life cycle assessment

An evaluation of the environmental impact of chemical vapor deposition (CVD) of the hard coating material titanium nitride (TiN) using life cycle assessment (LCA) is presented. The use of electricity and TiCl4 is identified as the two main environmental hotspots that should be in focus when improving the process to become more environmentally sustainable. We show the high impact of the energy mix on the sustainability of the CVD process and a higher sustainability for a process using NH3 than for a process using N2. The latter can be explained by a much more efficient deposition chemistry. We point to challenges in LCA of CVD, such as which impact category should be the target, and how this can affect the design and development, a lack of representative data, and a need to widen the system perspective to include the relevant product systems. We foresee that this type of LCA of CVD can serve as a guide on how to design more sustainable CVD processes and reactors.