A new method of Plasma Immersion Ion Implantation (PIII) and deposition (PIII and D) for treating industrial components in the batch mode has been developed. A metal tubular fixture is used to allocate the components inside, around, and along the tube, exposing only the parts of each component that are to be ion implanted to the plasma. Hollow cathode-like plasma is generated only inside the tube filled with the desired gas, by applying high negative voltage pulses to the hollow cylindrical fixture which is insulated from the vacuum chamber walls. This is a very convenient method of batch processing of industrial parts by ion implantation, in which a large number of small to medium sized components can be treated by PIII and PIII and D, very quickly, efficiently, and also at low cost.
Plasma immersion ion implantation (PIII) method is often used to cleaning and enhancing mechanical properties of the surface of materials. In this work, the AISI 304 was treated in a PIII system to improve tribological and wear resistance properties. The new HV pulser was prepared to reach high average power (10 kW) using solid-state technology and a pulse transformer rather than using a conventional one based on hard-tube tetrodes with HV storage capacitors. For preliminary tests, low-density nitrogen plasma and pulses of 10 kV, 30μs width, and 1 kHz were used. A larger vacuum chamber used (600 liters) is very important for treating large area components and for batch processing. This is necessary in industrial applications and in cases that require high quality processing as in spatial or medical components. Stainless steel support was used to hold the samples in our case. XRD, SEM, and pin-on-disk surface diagnostics were used for investigation and characterization of the treated surfaces.
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