Plasma-assisted surface hardening of dual two-phase intermetallic alloy composed of Ni@d3X type structures

• Published in: Materials science & engineering. A, Structural materials : properties, microstructure and processing Vol. 516; no. 1-2; pp. 84 - 89
• Main Authors: Kaneno, Y, Matsumoto, N, Tsuji, N, Tanaka, S, Takasugi, T
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 15.08.2009
• ISSN: 0921-5093
• DOI: 10.1016/j.msea.2009.03.010

A dual two-phase intermetallic alloy composed of Ni@d3Al (L1@d2) and Ni@d3V (D0@d2@d2) was plasma-nitrided (PN) or -carburized (PC) in dependence of processing temperature and time. The surface layers of nitrided or carburized alloy were characterized by micro-hardness measurement, scanning electron microscopy, electron probe micro-analysis and X-ray diffraction analysis. The maximum surface hardness of the alloy was obtained by nitriding at around 850K and by carburizing at 1025K, and little decreased up to a high temperature with increasing temperature. The XRD analysis revealed that vanadium nitrides (VN) and vanadium carbides (VC) were formed in the surface layer of the nitrided and carburized alloy, respectively; suggesting that the enhanced surface hardness is attributed to the dispersion hardening due to the nitrides and carbides.