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Benefits
Plasma nitriding gives better results than gaseous nitriding. Especially when applied to high-alloy steels,
plasma nitriding offers high surface hardness, which is reflected in high resistance to wear, scuffing,
galling and seizures.
Fatigue strength is increased mainly by the development of surface compressive stresses. Plasma
nitriding is an excellent choice whenever parts are required to have both nitriding and soft areas.
The ability to create a diffusion layer without a compound layer is often used in plasma nitriding prior
to PVD or CVD coating.

Application
Plasma nitriding is suitable for all ferrous materials, even sintered steels with higher porosity, cast iron
and high alloyed tool steels even with chromium contents higher than 12%. Stainless steels and nickel
based alloys can be plasma nitrided and keep most of their corrosion resistance if low temperatures
are applied. Special applications are plasma nitriding of titanium and aluminum alloys. For heavy loads
on large machine parts such as shafts and spindles, the use of special chromium and aluminum alloyed
nitriding steels gives a huge benefit as plasma nitriding generates a surface hardness of more than
1000 HV (Fig. 6. 9, Table 6. 1).

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Fig. 6. 9 Expected hardness for the various alloys at different case depths

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