SwRI Surface Modification Facility Offers Two New Capabilities - Southwest Research Institute - Brief Article

Automotive Finishing, Winter, 2000

Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), San Antonio, TX, has added both plasma immersion ion implantation and plasma immersion ion processing to its Ion Surface Modification Facility. The capabilities allow for surface modification at or near room temperature of large, three-dimensional objects. Plasma immersion ion processing (PIIP) is a relatively new vacuum technology for the application of hard wear-resistant coatings. Like conventional physical vapor deposition methods, PIIP is used to deposit various coatings, but the non-line-of-sight PIIP approach allows simultaneous treatment of large components and complex shapes without requiring component manipulation. The versatility of PIIP for surface modification allows the use of any gas with the same equipment. It can also be used for deposition of diamond-like carbon (DLC) coatings for roughly the same cost as electro-deposited hard chrome. Potential applications of PIIP include coating deposition to decrease friction and to improve wear resistance and corrosion resistance.

Plasma immersion ion implantation (PIII) is used primarily for nitrogen implantation to improve the wear resistance of metals and for other implantation processes for the semiconductor industry. The most common use of PIII is for the nitrogen implantation of electro-deposited hard chrome. It has been shown to increase wear life of hard chrome by a factor of two to three and to reduce the friction coefficient by approximately 30%. With the addition of these capabilities, larger components (greater than 1 sq meter) and heavier components (more than 500 lb) can be addressed.