Treatment of metals and metal alloys for aerospace application by means of high-temperature plasma immersion ion implantation

Abstract

Plasma immersion ion implantation (PIII) is a convenient method to treat workpieces with complex surface contours. Structural and chemical modification can be achieved without implying in dimensional variation of treated surfaces. Nevertheless, main drawback is the thin modified layer, of the order of tens to few hundreds of nanometers. In order to overcome this constraint high temperature PBII is performed. The heating of the substrate during ion implantation increase the diffusion of the implanted ions in direction to the bulk of the material and the thickness of the treated zone can reach a micrometric range.Innovative high temperature PBII process developed at LAP/INPE, successfully treated materials of interest for aerospace application (Mo, Nb, Ti6Al4V, NiTi, TiSiB). This method was effective to implant nitrogen up to 20 micrometers in depth, leading to the formation of new phases of nitrides, with outstanding mechanical and tribological properties. A compilation of these results was reported here and published in indexed scientific journals and presented in several national and international conferences.In summary, the developed high temperature PBII process showed to be efficient to treat materials for aerospace application, opening up possibilities to the effective treatment of pieces and components of the aerospace area. However, to attain this goal the experimental setup must be updated. In fact, nowadays only small samples can be treated, mainly due to a limitation imposed by our power supplies. This way, we ask for financial support to buy more powerful power supplies. (AU)