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The aims of this research are to  compare the resultant substrate and coating characteristic between PDC and DC in situ cleaning techniques The in situ cleaning experimental runs  for both DC and PDC substrate  biases  was performed at  500V for 3 hours on WC substrate prior to the deposition of TiN coating. Coating adhesion, substrate surface energy, surface roughnesses were inspected using CSEM scratch tester, wettability test and atomic force microscopy (AFM), respectively. The data was analyzed using Minitab and Excel software. Coating adhesion of samples treated by PDC was higher by 5.0% compared to that of cleaned using DC substrate bias. The analysis suggested that the improvement in adhesion was due to higher substrate surface energy and roughness.