Nitrogen Plasma Ion Implantation of Al and Ti alloys in the High Voltage Glow Discharge Mode

Enhanced surface properties can be attained for aluminum and its alloys (mechanical and tribological) and Ti6Al4V (mainly tribological) by Plasma Immersion Ion Implantation (PIII) technique. The main problem here, more severe for Al case, is the rapid oxygen contamination even in low O partial pressure. High energy nitrogen ions during PIII are demanded for this situation, in order to enable the ions to pass through the formed oxide layer. We have developed a PIII system that can operate at energies in excess of 50keV, using a Stacked Blumlein (SB) pulser which can nominally provide up to 100 kV pulses. Initially, we are using this system in the High Voltage Glow Discharge (HVGD) mode, to implant nitrogen ions into Al5052 alloy with energies in the range of 30 to 50keV, with 1.5μs duration pulses at a repetition rate of 100Hz. AES, pin-on-disc, nanoindentation measurements are under way but x-ray diffraction results already indicated abundant formation of AlN in the surface for Al5052 treated with this HVGD mode. Our major aim in this PIII experiment is to achieve this difficult to produce stable and highly reliable AlN rich surface layer with high hardness, high corrosion resistance and very low wear rate