New decorative coatings offer a substantial opportunity to improve aesthetics on jewelry components. However, resistance to abrasion and to tarnishing of the new coatings is still far from being studied for jewelry components. This paper is concerned with abrasion and tarnish resistance of interference colors in transparent coatings (TiOx), and of different intrinsic colors obtained by different combinations of titanium and gases (TiOxNy and TiOxNyCz). All coatings were obtained by reactive sputtering. A comparison of traditional coatings obtained by electroplating (gold and rhodium) and the new coatings will be made. Color and brightness change on all coatings will be assessed under common jewelry abrasion and tarnishing conditions.

Authors: Dr. Filipe S. Silva, P. Pinto, D. Soares, F. Vaz