**Abstract**

This chapter describes the fundamental and technological role of nitride-based hard coatings as protective coatings in some applications within the metalworking industry. For this, this chapter will present a critical review of previous research and recent developments on nitride-based coatings in different systems such as (multilayers, quaternaries, among others), where it will be possible to demonstrate their main properties and advantages that they can grant when they are implemented on conventional steels, such as greater hardness, surface control, electrochemical resistance, resistance against wear, among others. These results will determine that this type of coatings are suitable candidates to be implemented as protective coatings on cutting tools, which suffer from high wear in machining processes in the metalworking industry.

**Keywords:** tribology behavior, wear mechanisms, multilayer coatings, adhesive properties, surfaces analysis
