Tribological behaviour of nitrogen implanted into zirconium and titanium.

This paper gathers the studies of the effects introduced by Nitrogen implan tation on Ti and Zr. Atomic and molecular Nitrogen have been implanted on T itanium and Zirconium samples to investigate the role of these elements in the nitrides precipitation. In all cases an increase in microhardness, whic h in some cases was greater than 80% was found out. Moreover was observed i mprovements in the wear resistance and a decrease in the friction coefficie nt. AES and XPS spectroscopy revealed that nitride precipitation in titaniu m is more significant for the high atomic doses of Nitrogen implantation.