| abstract |
Disclosed is a crystalline hard coating layer having no cracks, which exhibits both high hardness and excellent wear resistance at the same time. A method for forming the hard coating layer is also disclosed. A crystalline hard coating layer (3) covering a base (2) is formed by a PVD method, and contains Si and C as essential ingredients, while containing an element M (which is one or more elements selected from group 3A elements, group 4A elements, group 5A elements, group 6A elements, B, Al and Ru) and N as optional ingredients. The crystalline hard coating layer (3) has the following composition: Si x C 1-x-y-z N y M z (wherein 0.4 ≤ x ≤ 0.6, 0 ≤ y ≤ 0.1 and 0 ≤ z ≤ 0.2). |