Comportamento do atrito por indentação em nanoescala do aço-carbono AISI 1045 nitretado e pós-oxidado com diferentes nanocamadas de magnetita

Abstract

The friction phenomenon still does not have an understanding in fundamental terms. Such understanding would help clarifying the frictional energy dissipation during the interaction between atoms of two or more surfaces along a contact. This interpretation for small scales could lead to the development of new materials and also to advances on existing ones, as well as to advances in surface engineering in order to improve the energy efficiency of components for various purposes. Focusing on the fundamental laws of friction, this work investigated quantitatively the friction behavior on the outermost layers of AISI 1045 steel. For this, the material’s surfaces were nitrided and post-oxidized by plasma treatment, generating different thicknesses of oxide which varied from 0 to 408 nm. For morphological characterization were employed scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and glow discharge optical emission spectrometry (GD-OES). The determination of crystal structures on the outermost layers were obtained by X-ray diffraction (XRD) at grazing angle. From this, it was observed that the nitrided layer is composed of nitride phases' such as γ’-Fe4N and ε-Fe2- 3N, while the surface of the oxidized samples reveal only a phase constituted of pure magnetite (Fe3O4) with nanometric thickness. Friction coefficient (CoF), roughness and reduced elastic modulus data were obtained by nanoindentation tests. Properties such as hardness, Young's modulus, surface roughness and plasticity index of all samples did not change greatly within the margin of experimental scatter. Comparing the oxidized samples with the just nitrided exhibits a decrease on the friction coefficient when the surface layer contains magnetite. Further, a comparison within the oxidized samples show CoF does not vary with the thickness of oxide. Thus, it can be inferred that the friction behavior is influenced by physical and chemical change of surface (nitrogen vs. oxygen, nitrides versus magnetite). As a consequence, the experimental results can be explained based on energy dissipation models by phonons. The referred models relate the vibrational frequency modes of the atoms present on the surface with the coefficient of friction, allowing to be inferred that in indentation tests with up to 200 nm, the dissipative mechanism (friction) is initiated by local and not collective vibrations.