Low Temperature Plasma Surface Alloying of Austenitic Stainless Steels

This paper gives a brief review on the three low temperature plasma surface alloying processes that have been developed in recent years to engineer the surfaces of austenitic stainless steels to achieve much enhanced surface hardness and wear resistance, without compromising their corrosion resistance. These include low temperature plasma nitriding, low temperature plasma carburizing and the newly developed hybrid process involving the simultaneous incorporation of nitrogen and carbon to form a dual layer structure. The processing, structural and property characteristics of each process are discussed briefly in this paper.