The focus of this paper was on the enhancement of
wear properties of CVD a-Al2O3. Several experimental
a-Al2O3 layers with different microstructures and textures
were deposited and characterised. The importance
of the nucleation surface to obtain a-Al2O3 coatings of
high quality is emphasised and it is demonstrated that,
under optimised conditions, fine-grained and defect-free
a-Al2O3 with substantially improved wear resistance
could be obtained. The most important conclusions
are presented below: