Improvement of tribological behavior of a Ti-Al-V alloy by nitrogen ion implantation

The tribological properties especially wear and hardness of a Ti-Al-V alloy with nitrogen implantation (energy 60 keV) were investigated. The implantation was carried out at fluences range from 1 × 1016to 4 × 1017 ions/cm2. Glancing angle X-ray diffraction (GAXRD) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) analyses were performed to obtain surface characterization of the implanted sample. The unimplanted and implanted samples were also annealed at 600 °C in order to understand the influence of annealing on the tribological properties of Ti-Al-V. The hardness shows significant improvement at the higher fluence. After annealing at 600 °C, the friction coefficient exhibits a relative decrease for the nitrogen-implanted samples. In addition, the wear rates of the implanted samples exhibits a great decrease after annealing at 600 °C. Nature of the surface and reason for the variation and improvement in wear resistance were discussed in detail.