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| Author(s): |
Luiz Fernando Zagonel
Total Authors: 1
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| Document type: | Doctoral Thesis |
| Press: | Campinas, SP. |
| Institution: | Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Instituto de Física Gleb Wataghin |
| Defense date: | 2006-02-14 |
| Examining board members: |
Fernando Alvarez;
Paulo Roberto Mei;
Antonio Ricardo Zanatta;
Francisco das Chagas Marques;
Mauro Monteiro Garcia de Carvalho
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| Advisor: | Fernando Alvarez |
| Abstract | |
The objective of this project is to study processes of plasma surface treatment with special emphasis to the differences these techniques might show in relation to others, looking forward to understand the process from surface phenomena. Two kinds of surface treatment have been studied, including three different techniques: ion beam nitriding, pulsed plasma nitriding and carbonitriding by ion beam assisted deposition. The treated alloy was the steel AISI-H13. The samples surfaces have been treated at several different temperatures, from 260°C to 600°C, several process times, from 75 minutes to 5 hours, several ion current densities e several gas mixtures, allowing the observations of different crystalline structures, surface and profile hardness, microstructures, and nitrogen concentration at the surface and within a profile. The undergone studies over these wide conditions leaded to the observation and modeling of the surface treatments at these different situations. Studies of nitriding with different ion beam compositions of nitrogen and hydrogen showed that hydrogen play a major role even in the absence of oxygen. The hydrogen presence within the surface allowed an enhancement on the nitrogen concentration and the formation of iron nitrides 1ike E-Fe2-3N. A study of nitriding over several different temperatures indicates that the nitrogen offer at the surface is not dependent upon temperature and even at very low temperatures like 260°C, high nitrogen concentration iron nitrides can be formed. The nitrogen diffusion is shown to be activated by temperature, but grain boundary effects seam to be present, what caused a hardness increase at high depths. The ion beam assisted deposition technique was used for carbonitriding. In this set-up, carbon is continuously deposited over the surface while the sample is exposed to nitrogen ions. The study showed that the approach displays distinct characteristics with respect to gas or p1asma carbonitriding. By this new technique, high carbon deposition preserves the formation of E-Fe2-3N phase, without loss of diffusion to bulk. A wide study about the role of the ion flux, temperature and time on ion nitriding process was also performed, looking forward to clarify the behavior of the chemical potential of nitrogen at the surface. As it was understood, this quantity will depend on the mass balance between the ion flux and the diffusion to bulk (AU) | |