Titanium diboride, TiB 2 , is well known as a ceramic material with a hexagonal structure which presents various attractive properties, such as high hardness and excellent corrosion, thermal oxidation, and wear resistance. However, one drawback of TiB 2 coatings is their poor adhesion to substrate materials due to high compressive residual stress after deposition. The present study aimed to assess whether a PVD-TiB 2 coating with both high hardness and sufficiently good adhesion to the substrate and good wear properties can be developed by a closed-field unbalanced magnetron sputtering system using pulsed-dc biasing. The TiB 2 coating deposited on AISI M2 steel substrates was characterized in terms of the structural, mechanical and tribological property. From the experimental results, it can be concluded that a closed-field unbalanced magnetron sputtering system using pulsed-dc biasing can be used to produce a TiB 2 coating with sufficiently good adhesion (82 N), and high hardness (2300 HK 0.01 ), and low friction (0.34) under given deposition conditions. The deposition conditions, particularly substrate biasing and rotation, which inhibited the formation of (001) orientation, played a role in the coating's lack of superhardness.