4.4. Effect of carbon content in steel substrate on microstructure of the coatings
The steel grade Q235C was used as substrate for this investigation. The major difference in alloy composition between this steel grade and steel 45# used in previous sections is in the carbon content. The carbon content in the former is specified in the range of ≤ 0.17 wt.%, which is much lower than that in the latter, which is in the range of 0.42–0.5 wt.%.
It is also evident that the surface showed a wavy profile and the thickness of the Cr-enriched interdiffusion zone was not uniform (Fig. 8a). These features were caused by the internal Cr-carbide precipitation in the Cr-enriched interdiffusion zone. As illustrated in Fig. 8a, the thickness of the Cr-enriched interdiffusion zone at the location marked out by the elliptic circle was noticeably smaller than at other locations. At this marked out location, a semi-continuous line of Cr-carbide precipitates was present across the thickness of Cr-enriched interdiffusion zone and it was oriented at a small angle to the thickness direction. The inward Cr diffusion would be slower at this location because of the presence of this semi-continuous line of Cr-carbide precipitates as Cr diffusion in Cr-carbide is likely to slower than in steel matrix. Consequently, the growth of the Cr-enriched interdiffusion zone will be slower at the locations where such a semi-continuous line of Cr-carbide precipitates is present than at locations where such a semi-continuous line of Cr-carbide precipitates was not present. As the growth of the Cr-enriched interdiffusion zone was accompanied by volume increase, the un-even inward Cr diffusion rates would lead to a non-uniform diffusion layer thickness across the surface plane, resulting in a wavy surface when viewed at the cross section under SEM.
It is relevant to point out that, despite the shape change in the surface as discussed above, there was no spallation or microcracks in the outer Cr2N layer. On the one hand, this surface shape change took place at processing temperatures at which the steel substrate would become quite soft and hence stresses raised in the coating as different coating layers grew would be relaxed by creep in steel substrate at high temperatures. On the other hand, the Cr concentration showed a decreasing depth profile in the Cr-enriched interdiffusion zone (Fig. 8b), which provided an intermediate layer in which thermal expansion changed gradually in the thickness direction, which alleviated the adverse effect of residual thermal stresses arising during cooling and hence ensured the integrity of the outer Cr2N layer. In fact, these mechanisms operated in all the coatings described in previous sections.
As described previously, the outer Cr2N layer thickness on steel Q235C after coating at 1100 °C for 4 h was approximately 9 μm. This was much thinner than that formed on steel 45# (about 17 μm) under the same processing conditions (see Section 4.1). Indeed, it was observed in general in this study that the outer Cr2N layer grew more easily on steel 45# than on steel Q235C, despite the fact that an inner Cr-carbide layer always formed in the surface of the former steel grade, but not in the surface of the latter steel grade. Thus, the formation of the inner Cr-carbide layer did not hinder but facilitated the growth of the outer Cr2N layer.