Coating on metallic samples produced by a small energy plasma focus

Abstract

A surface treatment of metallic samples irradiated by a nitrogen ion beam generated in a co-axial plasma gun is presented. By placing a titanium insert at the end of the inner electrode of the device, a TiN coating was produced on the surface of the sample. X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, electron probe x-ray micro-analysis and x-ray photoelectron speectroscopy were employed to study the surface of the treated sample. It was found that the main role of the ion beam was to produce a strong pre-heating of the superficial layers of the substrate, thus favouring the diffusion of the impinging particles.