Carbide layer coating on titanium by spark plasma sintering technique

Titanium materials are widely used in aerospace, automotive and biomaterial engineering fields due to high specific strength, superior fatigue and corrosion resistance as well as excellent biocompatibility. However, titanium exhibits low hardness and poor wear resistance. Therefore, the development of a suitable surface modification technology is necessary to expand the use of titanium materials. In order to improve hardness and wear resistance of materials, there is the method to form the hard ceramics layer on the matrix surface. In this study, carburizing method was applied. The carburizing method can form the carbide layer which is superior in adhesion with the matrix compared with PVD or CVD method. However, in conventional carburizing methods, the deterioration of the mechanical properties of the matrix as a result of long-term and high-temperature processing is problematic. Therefore, spark plasma sintering technique, which features short processing times, was applied to form a carbide layer in this study. The purpose of this research is to form a TiC layer on commercially pure Ti (CP-Ti) and evaluate its properties. CP-Ti was used as the substrate, and graphite powder was used as the carburizing source. XRD analyses indicated that a TiC layer was formed on the substrates. Corrosion tests indicated that the corrosion resistance of the carburized samples was remarkably improved compared to that of CP-Ti. Wear tests revealed that the carburized samples exhibited low friction coefficients and improved tribological properties.