Oxidation resistance of Y-implanted steel using accelerator based techniques

The thermal oxidation behavior in air of Y-implanted (fluence 2 × 1017 ions/cm2) and non-implanted stainless steel AISI-321 samples was investigated using the 16O(d,p)17O nuclear reaction and Rutherford backscattering spectrometry (RBS). The oxidation temperature was 650 and 900 °C and the duration of the thermal treatment 48 hours. The influence of the implantation energy (40, 55 and 80 keV) on the oxidation behavior of stainless steel was also studied. An improvement of the oxidation resistance of the Y-implanted samples with increasing implantation energy was observed. Additional secondary ion mass spectroscopy (SIMS) measurements of the samples implanted by 40 keV Y-ions also indicated a slight chromium depletion of their near-surface layers. Mechanisms attempting to explain the experimental results are proposed.