Dry wear behaviour of boron- and nitrogen-implanted steels

Abstract

The wear behaviour of steels implanted with boron or nitrogen ions was investigated using a ball-on-disk tribometer. The wear rate of the nitrogen-implanted steels was strongly dependent on the steel composition and on the temperature during implantation or during subsequent annealing. Considerable wear improvement (wear rate three orders of magnitude lower) was obtained only for steels with a high chromium content which had been treated at a temperature of at least 250 °C. Boron implantation resulted in a decrease of the wear rate for steels with high and low chromium content; a heat treatment up to 300 °C had no influence. The improvement of the wear behaviour was correlated with an increase in microhardness. The wear behaviour was dominated by an oxidative wear mode. The benefit of ion implantation was observed only in ambient atmospheres allowing oxidation during the wear process.