Implantation of steel from MEVVA ion source with bronze cathode

Bronze is known as an excellent material for bushes co-operating with steel shafts because of its low friction coefficient and low wear rate. Therefore, an improvement of the tribological properties can be expected after implanting steel with the bronze constituents (Cu and Sn). Steel samples were implanted in a MEVVA-type implanter equipped with a bronze cathode and operated at 75 kV. To determine the retained doses of the implanted elements, the samples were analyzed by RBS technique using 1.4 MeV He ions. The results show that the retained vs. implanted dose dependence saturates at implanted doses of the order of 10(17) cm(-2), due to the sputtering effects. The maximum retained doses obtained for Cu and Sn amount to 5.4x 10(16)cm(-2) and 1.2x10(15)cm(-2), respectively.