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Thermal stability of iron nitrides prepared by mixing laser and plasma beam nitriding (LPN) technology was studied. The treated samples were annealed in vacuum at different temperature from 473 K to 1273 K. The phases were detected by X-ray diffraction (XRD), the nitride’s contents were calculated from the patterns of XRD, and the microstructures were analyzed by scanning electron microscope (SEM). Three critical temperatures (473 K, 673 K, and 1273 K) are found. Due to deeper nitriding layer in the LPN sample, the nitrides is more stable than that in laser-produced sample at the annealing temperature higher than 973 K. It is important and central for some potential industrial productions and applications.

A program is modeled to describe nitriding depth by a new mixing laser and plasma beams nitriding (LPN) technique. The model extends the transport of ions in matter (TRIM) program by adding temperature and energy factors into the energy function. The nitriding depths and nitrogen distribution in substrate were calculated by Monte Carlo program. There is a good agreement between calculation and experiment results at different laser energy intensities, scanning velocities and nitrogen ion energies respectively. Moreover, the nitriding process diagrams by LPN technique are shown from calculation results.

In this work, the nitrogen molecular dissociation and ionization levels in Ar/N 2 flue plasma are evaluated as functions of plasma parameters such as Ar mixture quantity and N 2 flux in order to obtain the best condition for various applications such as thin film deposition and material surface modification. This plasma is operated at 10 kV and the nitrogen dissociation rate is determined by analyzing the optical emission of the nitrogen band. For different operating conditions, the dissociation rate [N] of N 2 molecules was enhanced, as the mixture quantity of Ar increased from 0.06 m 3 /h to 0.9 m 3 /h and the max of enhancement factor is 4.3. This factor becomes bigger when the N 2 flux becomes bigger. Moreover, the molecular nitrogen ionization density is calculated from the current intensity of the plasma. The ionization density was also enhanced, as the mixture quantity of Ar increased from 0.1 m 3 /h to 1.5 m 3 /h, under three different voltages. The max of enhancement factor of 1.96 is much smaller than the factor of the dissociation rate. These results are discussed in terms of the kinetics of the electrons, nitrogen ions, atoms and molecules.