Solid state alloying by plasma nitriding and diffusion annealing treatment for austenitic stainless steel

Nitrogen has been added to stainless steels to improve mechanical strength and corrosion resistance. High Nitrogen steel production is limited by high gas pressure requirements and low nitrogen solubility in the melt. One way to overcome this limitation is the addition of Nitrogen in solid state because of its higher solubility in austenite. However, gas and salt bath nitriding have been done at temperatures around 550 degrees C, where nitrogen solubility in the steel is still very low. High temperature nitriding has been, thus proposed to increase nitrogen contents in the steel but the presence of oxide layers on top of the steel is a barrier to nitrogen intake. In this paper a modified plasma nitriding process is proposed. The first step of this process is a hydrogen plasma sputtering for oxide removal, exposing active steel surface improving nitrogen pickup. This is followed by a nitriding step where high nitrogen contents are introduced in the outermost layer of the steer. Diffusion annealing is then performed in order to allow nitrogen diffusion into the core. AISI 316 austenitic stainless steel was plasma nitrided and diffusion annealed at 1423K, for 6 hours, with 0.2 MPa nitrogen pressure. The nitrided steel presented similar to 60 mu m outermost compact layer of (Fe,Cr)(3)N and (Fe,Cr)(4)N with 11 wt. % N measured by surface depth profiling chemical analysis - GDS system. During the annealing treatment the nitride layer tvas dissolved and nitrogen diffused to the core of the sample leaving more even nitrogen distribution into the steel. Using this technique one-millimetre thick sample were obtained having high nitrogen content and uniform distribution through the thickness.