Surface modification by nitrogen plasma immersion ion implantation into new steel 460Li–21Cr in a capacitively coupled radio frequency discharge

Highlights: • Nitriding of a novel steel has been done in a RF plasma by PIII technique. • Improved hardness and wear behavior have been observed. • Hardness was improved by a factor 4 and the wear by 2 orders of magnitude. • Fast, anomalous diffusion, similar to nitrogen in expanded austenite is observed. - Abstract: A novel steel 460Li–21Cr belonging to a new generation of superferritic grade steel has been implanted with nitrogen in a low power 13.56 MHz radio frequency plasma by the plasma immersion ion implantation (PIII) technique in order to study its physical and chemical properties under different experimental conditions. We observed improved hardness and wear behavior of 460Li–21Cr steel with a layer thickness between 1.5 and 4.0 μm after 60 min implantation in the temperature range from 350 to 550 °C. The modified surface layer containing nitrogen does not show CrN in X-ray diffraction (XRD). Compared to untreated substrates, the hardness can be increased by a factor of 4, depending on the experimental conditions, and the wear behavior was also improved by two orders of magnitude. The results are very similar to those for austenitic stainless steel with a similar pronounced increase in wear resistance and plateau-like nitrogen depth profiles