High Density RF-DC Plasma Nitriding under Optimized Conditions by Plasma-Diagnosis

This paper is concerned with plasma diagnosis on a N2-H2 gas mixture to determine the optimum parameters for the nitriding process. Plasma parameters such as pressure, RF-voltage, and DC-bias were varied for optimization. The active species such as N2+ and NH were identified in plasma diagnosis. In the N2-H2 gas mixture, hydrogen imposed a great influence on plasma generation. The small addition of a hydrogen molecule into the gas mixture resulted in the highest yield of N2+ ions and NH radicals; the optimum hydrogen content was 20% in the mixture. The austenitic stainless-steel type AISI304 was nitrided at 673 K and 623 K to experimentally demonstrate that hydrogen gas content optimization is necessary to improve the surface hardness and to describe low temperature nitriding under high nitrogen flux at the surface.