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Higher Nitriding Efficiency in Ultrafine-Grained Iron Processed by Ultrasonic Nanocrystal Surface Modification

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Abstract

In this work, the nitriding efficiency in an ultrafine-grained iron was investigated. Prior to nitriding, the ultrasonic nanocrystalline surface modification (UNSM) technique was used to process the coarse-grained iron to obtain ultrafine-grained iron. Gas nitriding was conducted for the UNSM-treated iron and the coarse-grained iron at temperatures from 300 °C to 560 °C. The results indicate that the combination of UNSM and nitriding provide much higher efficiency for hardening than the sum of the efficiencies of UNSM alone and nitriding alone. Nitride nucleation was confirmed in the diffusion layer of the UNSM-treated iron following the nitriding process, enhancing the hardness after nitriding. X-ray diffraction patterns were obtained for both the UNSM-treated iron subjected to nitriding as well as iron that underwent only nitriding at different temperatures. It was also found that the minimum temperatures required to form nitrides, including γ′-Fe4N, ε-Fe3N, ε-Fe2N, and FeN, were reduced because of the high chemical potential at the grain boundaries. The theoretical analysis suggests that heterogeneous nitride nucleation at grain boundaries is the key factor that contributes to the enhancement in hardness in the nitriding layer in ultrafine-grained metals and nanocrystalline metals.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge support from startup funds and the Firestone Research Fellowship of The University of Akron. We also would like to thank Dr. Eric J. Mittemeijer from the Max Planck Institute for Metal Research for his valuable input. This work was performed in part at the Analytical Instrumentation Facility (AIF) at North Carolina State University, which is supported by the State of North Carolina and the National Science Foundation (through Award Number ECCS-1542015). The AIF is a member of the North Carolina Research Triangle Nanotechnology Network (RTNN), which is part of the National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure (NNCI).

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The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Akron, Akron, OH, 44325-3903, USA

    Jingyi Zhao, Zhencheng Ren, G. X. Wang, Yalin Dong & Chang Ye

  2. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, 27695, USA

    Xiahan Sang & Yang Liu

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  1. Jingyi Zhao
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  2. Zhencheng Ren
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Correspondence to Yalin Dong or Chang Ye.

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Manuscript submitted December 1, 2020, accepted August 8, 2021.

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Zhao, J., Ren, Z., Sang, X. et al. Higher Nitriding Efficiency in Ultrafine-Grained Iron Processed by Ultrasonic Nanocrystal Surface Modification. Metall Mater Trans A 52, 4813–4826 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11661-021-06426-y

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