Composition-dependent structure of polycrystalline magnetron-sputtered V–Al–C–N hard coatings studied by XRD, XPS, XANES and EXAFS

V–Al–C–N hard coatings with high carbon content were deposited by reactive radio-frequency magnetron sputtering from a segmented sputter target. The composition-dependent coexisting phases were analysed using the complementary methods of X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), X-ray absorption near-edge spectroscopy (XANES) and extended X-ray absorption fine-structure spectroscopy (EXAFS).