Duplex

The combination treatment.

Performance characteristics are also boosted considerably by the combination of plasma nitriding and PVD. These two methods are integrated in the one duplex process.

Plasma nitriding is a classical thermochemical case treatment. By enriching the material surface with nitrogen, this method greatly increases the surface hardness, and hence its capacity as a substrate for hard PVD coatings. At the same time, the surface can better absorb compressive loads. Also, the so called white layer is suppressed, eliminating effectively its disruptive effects.

Basically all coatable and nitridable steel materials are suitable. The duplex process can therefore be used to treat a large number of materials without sacrifice to geometrical consistency or toughness. Also polishes remain intact.

This is a particularly practical solution for forming high strength sheet materials in conjunction with TiCN or Variantic, and often an alternative to CVD coatings.