In situ x-ray diffraction investigations during low energy ion nitriding of austenitic stainless steel grade 1.4571

摘要

Insertion of nitrogen into austenitic stainless steel leads to anomalously fast nitrogen diffusion and the formation of an expanded face-centred cubic phase which is known to contain a large amount of mechanical stress. In situ x-ray diffraction (XRD) measurements during low energy nitrogen ion implantation into steel 316Ti at 300-550 ?C allow a direct view into diffusion and phase formation. While the layer growth is directly observable from the decreasing substrate reflection intensity, the time evolution of the intensities for the expanded phase reflection is much more complex: several mechanisms including at least formation and annealing of defects, twinning, reduction of the crystal symmetry, or grain rotation may be active inside the expanded phase, besides the thermally activated decay of the metastable expanded phase. This locally varying coherence length or scattering intensity from the expanded phase is furthermore a function of temperature and time, additionally complicating the deconvolution of XRD spectra for stress and concentration gradients. As no concise modelling of this coherence length is possible at present, a simple qualitative model assuming a dependence of the scattering intensity on the depth, influence by stress and plastic flow during the nitriding process is proposed for understanding the underlying processes.