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Plasma Nitriding of AISI 304 Stainless Steel in Cathodic and Floating Electric Potential: Influence on Morphology, Chemical Characteristics and Tribological Behavior

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Abstract

In direct current plasma nitriding (DCPN), the treated components are subjected to a high cathodic potential, which brings several inherent shortcomings, e.g., damage by arcing and the edging effect. In active screen plasma nitriding (ASPN) processes, the cathodic potential is applied to a metal screen that surrounds the workload, and the component to be treated is placed in a floating potential. Such an electrical configuration allows plasma to be formed on the metal screen surface rather than on the component surface; thus, the shortcomings of the DCPN are eliminated. In this work, the nitrided experiments were performed using a plasma nitriding unit. Two groups of samples were placed on the table in the cathodic and the floating potential, corresponding to the DCPN and ASPN, respectively. The floating samples and table were surrounded by a steel screen. The DCPN and ASPN of the AISI 304 stainless steels are investigated as a function of the electric potential. The samples were characterized using scanning electron microscopy with energy-dispersive x-ray spectroscopy, x-ray diffraction, atomic force microscopy and transmission electron microscope. Dry sliding ball-on-disk wear tests were conducted on the untreated substrate, DCPN and ASPN samples. The results reveal that all nitrided samples successfully produced similar nitrogen-supersaturated S phase layers on their surfaces. This finding also shows the strong impact of the electric potential of the nitriding process on the morphology, chemical characteristics, hardness and tribological behavior of the DCPN and ASPN samples.

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Acknowledgments

The project was supported by the National Key Basic Research Program of China (973) (2014CB046404), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (51301149) and the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation funded project (2015M570090).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Tribology, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, People’s Republic of China

    Yang Li, Yongyong He, Wei Wang & Junyuan Mao

  2. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Yantai University, Yantai, 264005, People’s Republic of China

    Yang Li, Yijie Zhu & Qianwen Ye

  3. School of Electromechanical Automobile Engineering, Yantai University, Yantai, 264005, People’s Republic of China

    Lei Zhang

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Li, Y., He, Y., Wang, W. et al. Plasma Nitriding of AISI 304 Stainless Steel in Cathodic and Floating Electric Potential: Influence on Morphology, Chemical Characteristics and Tribological Behavior. J. of Materi Eng and Perform 27, 948–960 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11665-018-3199-8

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