Institute of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus carries out a wide range of research in the field of metal hardening and surface engineering. The results of the research can be used in aerospace, medical, chemical industries and in electronics manufacture.
Among the materials of modern technology, titanium alloys take an important place, due to the unique combination of physical, chemical, mechanical and technological titanium properties: high fusion temperature, low density, corrosion resistance, non-magnetization, low module of elasticity, rather high hardness, thermal expansion low coefficient etc. Titanium and its alloys have found widespread application in aircraft engineering, medical, chemical, petrochemical, cellulose-paper and food industries, non-ferrous metallurgy, power-plant engineering, electronics, electrodeposition, weaponry manufacture etc.
For wear resistance increasing, fatigue strength and anticorrosion workpieces properties of aeronautical engineering, technological equipment and components from titanium and its alloys, various methods are used in the world practice. The nitriding provides maximum effect. By now for surface hardening processes research, gas nitriding was used primarily, which has extremely long process (until 30 hours). Besides that, plasma-arc low-temperature nitriding of workpieces was applied. However, equipment for implementation of mentioned methods is characterized with a vacuum chamber low volume and, as a rule, doesn’t allow holding a processing of overall and massive workpieces.
Meanwhile, as the analysis of available literature data and own preliminary researches of the project authors was shown, ion nitriding in a glow discharge plasma is the most promising method of titanium alloys surface hardening. It provides a high speed of titanium alloys surface saturation with nitrogen, obtaining of hardened layers 0,07-0,2 mm thickness, depending on titanium alloy grade, possibility of surface layer structure controlled obtaining, while maintaining the mechanical properties of the material, taking into account the specific conditions of workpieces using. IPN has high level of flexibility and reproducibility of the achieved results.

Ion-plasma nitriding technology of titanium alloys allows reducing the total processing time by 2-3 times, reduces the consumption of working gases by 10 times in comparison with gas nitriding. The ion-plasma nitriding technology is safe for the environment. Computer control of a saturation process makes it possible to obtain diffuse layers of a required composition and thickness.