• Journal of the Korean institute of surface engineering
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• v.53 no.2
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• pp.43-52
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• 2020

Various aging treatments were conducted on AISI 630 martensitic precipitation hardening stainless steel in order to optimize aging condition. Aging treatment was carried out in the vacuum chamber of Ar gas with changing aging temperature from 380℃ to 430℃ and aging time from 2h to 8h at 400℃. After obtaining the optimized aging condition, several nitrocarburizing treatments were done without and with the aging treatment. Nitrocarburizing was performed on the samples with a gas mixture of H₂, N₂ and CH₄ for 15 h at vacuum pressure of 4.0 Torr and discharge voltage of 400V. The corrosion resistance was improved noticeably by combined process of aging and nitrocarburizing treatment, which is attributed to higher chromium and nitrogen content in the passive layer, as confirmed by XPS analysis. The optimized condition is finalized as, 4h aging at 400℃ and then subsequent nitrocarburizing at 400℃ with 25% nitrogen and 4% methane gas for 15h at vacuum pressure of 4.0 Torr and discharge voltage of 400V, resulting in the surface hardness of around 1300 HV_0.05 and α'_N layer thickness of around 11 ㎛ respectively.