I-Corps: Nanostructured wear and corrosion resistant surfaces for titanium and titanium alloy applications

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The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project affects all industries that employ mechanical components fabricated from titanium or titanium alloys. The ability to solve the problems of poor wear resistance of titanium and titanium alloys facilitates and accelerates the utilization of titanium alloys for mechanical components in many markets. This is especially beneficial for those markets that require materials with high corrosion resistance, the capacity to handle high temperatures, and materials that possess a high tensile strength to density ratio. This technology will potential significantly benefit first markets in the automotive and aerospace industries where titanium utilization is expected to grow significantly. The potential of this project can also extend to biomedical devices and components such as medical implants. Additive manufacturing technologies have accelerated the growth of titanium-containing materials in these and other markets, and this project should contribute synergistically with advanced manufacturing initiatives.This I-Corps project will further develop a new surface treatment for titanium and titanium alloys. The surface treatment consists of a modified oxide layer produced through thermochemical processes. After initially generating an oxide layer, a post nitriding process produces a unique structure containing nanocrystalline titanium nitride in a titanium dioxide matrix. The wear and corrosion resistance of specimens with this surface treatment have been benchmarked against untreated specimens and specimens treated with other commercially available engineered surfaces. The nanocomposite converted surfaces were shown to provide a 300x improvement in the wear resistance in dry and tribocorrosive environments, and a 10x improvement over thermal oxidation and nitriding. This technology is an improvement over previous attempts used to attain this unique surface morphology that used toxic chemicals that leave hazardous contaminants in the coating.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.