Surface Treatment of Metals

The present invention relates to the surface treatment of materials, and more particularly to the increasing of the surface hardness of metals.

It is known that the implantation of ions of elements such as N, C or B which can occupy interstitial sites in the crystal lattices of alloys such as steel will increase their surface hardness and resistance to wear. It is known also that surface coatings of metals such as titanium or tantalum can be hardened by bombardment with ions of nitrogen, to convert the surface coating to hard titanium nitride, or tantalum nitride, respectively.

Although such a process is satisfactory when applied to a substrate such as a martensitic steel, which is in itself hard, the hard coatings can be damaged and removed relatively easily from softer substrate materials.

According to the present invention there is provided a method of modifying the properties of a surface of a metal body, comprising the operations of implanting into the said surface ions of a material capable of occupying interstitial sites in the crystal lattice of the body, so as to harden initially the said surface, deposition onto the hardened surface a layer of a reactive metal, and subjecting the deposited layer to bombardment with a reactive ion species capable of reacting with the said reactive metal to provide a hard, wear resisting compound, the energy of the reactive ion species initially being such as to cause radiation enhanced diffusion of the metal layer into the substrate and then reduced so as to implant the reaction ion species into the metallic layer to form the said hard, wear resisting compound.

Suitable ion species for the initial hardening stage of the process are N.sup.+, C.sup.+ or B.sup.+. Suitable reactive metals are titanium, tantanlum, zirconium, or hafnium, and suitable reactive ion species are N.sup.+, B.sup.+ and CO.sup.+, or a mixture of two or more of the ion species. The initial ion bombardment preferably is carried out with ion energies in the range 100-150 KeV. The reactive metal can be deposited by any of the conventional vacuum deposition techniques, examples being electron beam evaportion, thermal evaporation, or sputtering. The final stage is commenced with ion beam energies similar to those used in the first stage, but then reduced to within the range 10-30 KeV.

The invention will now be described, by way of example, with reference to the accompanying drawings (FIGS. 1(a), 1(b), and 1(c)) which illustrate the operations involved in a process embodying the invention.

Referring to the drawings, in FIG. 1(a) there is shown a part of a substrate body 1 made of a conventional engineering steel, which is being subjected to bombardment with a beam 2 of N.sup.+ ions at an energy of 150 KeV. This bombardment is continued until an ion dose of some 10.sup.1 ions/sq cm has been implanted into a surface region 3 of the body 1, which is to be hardened to enhance its wear resistance. The surface region 3 of the body 1 is then coated with a layer 4 of a reactive metal such as titanium by means of an electron beam evaporation process until a deposit some 200 nm thick has been built up, as illustrated in FIG. 1(b) of the drawing. Bombardment with ions is then re-commenced, as shown in FIG. 1(c) of the drawings, initially with the same energy as before, but with a mixture of N.sup.+ and CO.sup.+ ions. Finally the ion energy is reduced to about 30 KeV until the deposited titanium has reacted with the N.sup.+ and CO.sup.+ ions to form mixed oxy-carbo-nitrides of titanium.

In a modified form of the process, which is not illustrated, ions of a species which are oversized in relation to the crystal lattice, such as yttrium are implanted together with the interstitial species during the first stage of the process. These ions associate with the interstitial ions to form substitutional-interstitial pairs or dipoles which act as powerful obstacles to the movement of dislocations within the crystal lattice.