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**Chapter 5** 

© 2012 Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Canada, licensee InTech. This is an open access chapter

© 2012 Czerwinski, licensee InTech. This is a paper distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction

distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License

Historically, the thermochemical treatment was limited to machined parts, forgings and castings with an application in machinery, automotive, tooling, oil drilling, mining and defence [1]. The key processes covered nitriding, carburizing and their combinations. Similarly, steel was in practice the only material subjected to the modification. To enhance the process predictability and repeatability, the conventional gas nitriding was refined and the alternative technique of ion (plasma) nitriding was introduced. In quest for the perfect process, the plasma technology is still a subject of continuous improvement and developed techniques of post discharge nitriding or active screen plasma nitriding may serve as examples [2]. In the meantime, the thermochemical modifications included other processes such as boronizing, aluminizing, chromizing or thermo-reactive diffusion, exploring vanadium, molybdenum and other carbide-forming elements. Although they never achieved the application level of nitriding, they successfully serve many niche markets.

Surface engineering represents the technically attractive and economically viable method aimed at improving the superficial layer of materials. Since the material surface controls the service life in many applications, the objective is to develop a wide range of functional properties that are different from the base substrate including physical, chemical, electrical, electronic, magnetic or mechanical. Being a part of surface engineering, the thermochemical treatment employs thermal diffusion to incorporate non-metal or metal atoms into a material surface to modify its chemistry and microstructure (Fig. 1). The process is conducted in solid, liquid or gaseous media with one or several simultaneously active chemical elements. For majority of thermochemical treatments the mechanism includes a decomposition of solid, liquid or gaseous species, splitting of gaseous molecules to form nascent atoms, absorption of atoms, their diffusion into a metallic lattice and reactions within the substrate structure to modify existing or form new phases. Since in industrial scale processes the entire part is subjected to high temperatures, surface diffusion is superimposed on changes within the material volume that for some treatments may involve

in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

**Thermochemical Treatment of Metals** 

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

phase transformations and this adds to the complexity.

Frank Czerwinski

**1. Introduction** 

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/51566

