Deposited as a thin PVD or CVD coating under 5 micrometres thick, golden face-centered cubic TiN triples the edge life of drill bits and milling cutters and coats biocompatible medical implants.
Despite being a refractory ceramic, TiN conducts electricity (resistivity ~39 μΩ·cm) and serves in sub-45 nm CMOS microelectronics as a diffusion barrier and metal-gate electrode.
Single-crystal TiN superconducts below 5.6–6.0 K, while disordered ultrathin TiN films chilled near absolute zero can undergo a superconductor-to-superinsulator transition.