SINOPSIS

The paper presents results of the research carried out on two important aspects of continuous duplex treatment technology. The first one concerns the influence of the ion etching intensity on destruction of the compound zone in the nitrided layer. The second investigated problem is the influence of the compound zone occurrence on the adhesion of the CrN coating to the nitrided substrate, i.e. on the cohesion of the composite “nitrided layer/CrN coating”. Two different nitrided layers: with mono-phase structure α-Fe(N), and with two-phase structure α-Fe(N)+(ε+γ') were created by the plasma nitriding process. Both types of nitrided layers underwent ion etching processes with different intensities and next the CrN coating was deposited with the use of the arc-vacuum method. Phase composition and cohesion of created in this way composites “nitrided layer/CrN coating” with different mono-phase and multi-phase structures of the nitrided layer were investigated with the use of the X-ray diffraction and the scratch-test methods. Besides, the wear mechanisms of the composites were identified on the basis of the scratch traces analysis carried out with the use of the metallographic and scanning electron microscopy.