Abstract: The carbon containing hard coating (1) according to the invention comprises nano-crystalline grains being separated from each other by grain boundaries, wherein said hard coating comprises aluminium (Al), at least one additional metal (Me1, Me2), carbon (C) and at least one further element (E1, E2) and has the chemical composition: (AlxMe1yMe2z)CuE1vE2w wherein Me1 is a metal, and Me2 is a metal, with x>0.4 and x+y+z=1 and y,z?0, and E1 and E2 are further chemical elements with 1>u>0 and u+v+w=1 and v,w?0. The grain-boundaries have a higher concentration of carbon atoms than the nano-crystalline-grains.

Abstract: The invention refers to hard coating coated parts which are coated with a hard coating containing the elements Al, Ti, Cr, N, O with a chemical composition of each element of AlaTibCrcNwO100−w in the range of 30≦a≦70, 30≦b≦70, 0.5≦c≦20 a+b+c=100 at % and 70≦w≦99%. The invention aims at a superior adhesion between the coating and the substrate without a reduction of the wear resistance, of the oxidation resistance and the friction properties, but improving every one of the coating properties to achieve a stable behavior under heavy-duty cutting resulting in a long life-time. Therefore, it is proposed that the full width at half maximum (FWHM) 2 &thgr; of the (200)x-ray diffraction peak is larger than 0.4° and smaller than 0.7°.