Use of combination of accelerator-based ion-beam analysis techniques to the investigation of the corrosion behavior of CoCrMo alloy

• Effect of plasma nitriding-oxidizing on the corrosion and mechanical properties of CoCrMo alloy.
• The double treatment (nitriding+oxidizing) led to higher improvement.
• This effect is attributed to the presence of a stable nitride layer.

Nuclear Reaction Analysis – NRA in combination with d-RBS (Ed: 1.35 MeV) was applied in order to investigate the corrosion behavior of CoCrMo alloy. The corrosion resistance of the alloy was compared to that of modified CoCrMo samples by several techniques as plasma nitriding and oxidizing at moderate temperature (∼400 °C). Electrochemical techniques in simulated body fluid 0.9% NaCl (37 °C) were applied in order to accelerate the corrosion process. The nitrogen depth distribution before and after the corrosion was determined using the 14N(d,α)12C and the 14N(d,p)15N nuclear reactions whereas the oxygen by the 16O(d,p)17O. The surface morphology and microstructure was investigated using microscopy techniques. It was found that surface treatments produce thick nitrided layers (5–6 μm) consisting of a supersaturated nitrogen solution (nitrogen concentration is ∼30 at.%) in the matrix (expanded phase γN) and a thin oxygen solution (0.3 μm). The samples subjected to plasma nitridation and oxidation exhibited the lowest deterioration and better resistance to corrosion compared to the single nitrided or single oxidized and the untreated material. This could be attributed to the modified surface region with the high nitrogen content and the presence of oxygen.