Corrosion resistance of the layers formed on the surface of plasma-nitrided AISI 304L steel

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Austenitic stainless steels have good corrosion resistance, but their low hardness and low wear resistance limit their use whenever surface hardness is required. Nitriding treatments have been successfully applied to stainless steels to improve their mechanical and tribological properties; however, at temperatures above 723 K, gas or salt bath nitriding processes decrease the corrosion resistance due to the formation of CrN and other phases within the modified layer. Chromium compounds draw chromium and nitrogen from the adjacent regions, degrading the corrosion resistance. The plasma nitriding technique permits the use of treatment temperatures as low as 623 K without promoting degradation in the corrosion resistance of stainless steel. In this work, the pulsed glow discharge (PGD) technique was used for nitriding steel (AISI304L) in order to investigate the effect of the temperature of this treatment in the morphology and, as a consequence, in the anodic behavior of the formed layers, in solution with and without chloride ions. Four different temperatures were employed (623, 673, 723, and 773 K). The samples were characterized by optical microscopy (OM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) with energy-dispersive spectroscopy (EDS), X-ray diffraction (XRD), microhardness measurements, and electrochemical tests with potentiodynamic anodic polarization curves. The nitriding temperature alters the anodic behavior due to a displacement of the polarization curve towards higher currents, in a solution free of chloride ions. In a chloride solution, the nitriding temperature increases the pitting potential up to the oxygen evolution region.