Improvement of wear resistance of Zircaloy-4 by nitrogen implantation

Nitrogen implantation process has been applied for improvement of wear resistance of Z Zircaloy-4 fuel cladding materials. Nitrogen was implanted at 120 ke V to a total do range of 1xHP ions/cm2 to 8xlO17 ions/cm2 at various temperatures of 298"C to 676"C. The m microstructure changes by nitrogen implantation were analyzed by using TEM, XRD 뻐d A AES, cmd then wear behavior was evaluated by ball-on-disc wear testings at various loads a and sliding velocity under unlubricated condition. Nitrogen implantation produced ZrNx nitride above 4.37x1017 ions!cm2 as well as heavy d dislocations, which enhanced microhardness of the implanted surface of up to 900 Hk from 2 200 Hk of unimplanted substrate. Hardness was also found to be increased with increasing i implantation temperature and enhanced up to OOOHk at 620 "C. the wear resistance was g greatly improved with increasing total ion do않 as well as implantation temperature. The effective enhancement of wear resistance at high dose and tem야ratures is believed d due to significant hardening associated with high degree of precipitation of Zr nitrides and g generation of prismatic dislocation I$\infty$ps.infty$ps.