Types

	Solid bearings Solid bearings are made completely from special bearing metals that consist of specialized alloys.
	Two-material bearings Two-material bearings are used for low to medium loads in gasoline and naturally aspirated diesel engines. They consist of a steel backing, an intermediate layer and a layer of bearing metal. Aluminum alloys are the primary material used as bearing metal.
	Three-material bearings Three-material bearings are mainly used in engines that are subject to higher loads. They consist of a steel backing, a bearing layer, a barrier layer and the sliding layer. Sputter bearings are special three-material bearings with significantly increased hardness and wear resistance due to a special production method (sputtering). Therefore, sputter bearings are suited for supercharged engines with charge cooling and are also increasingly used in diesel passenger car engines.

Sputtering
Sputtering is a coating method based on the principle of cathode sputtering, in which atoms are ejected from a metal cathode due to the impacting ions from a gas discharge process. The resulting atomized metal condenses on the bearing surface of the bearing as a uniform layer.