Recent advances in plasma assisted surface engineering

It is some fifty years since the original patents on glow discharge processing of metals were filed. These were to form the basis of the commercial exploitation of both plasma thermochemical and plasma assisted coating technologies. Efforts are being made by a variety of workers to undertake successive plasma nitriding and coating treatments in the same reactor chamber. In this paper plasma thermochemical diffusion and plasma deposition technologies are reviewed. In addition, the current industrial status of such methods is discussed, and reference is made to the wide range of engineering materials and components that have been treated