With the most effective balance of carbon, chromium, nickel and molybdenum for corrosion resistance, AISI
316L austenitic stainless steel is widely used for high temperature, aggressively corrosive conditions and
nuclear reactor applications. However, with a low hard- ness (200 HV) and an austenitic structure which cannot
be hardened by heat treatment, there is no easy way to improve its wear resistance [ 11. Laser processing allows the superficial incorporation of hard particles into most metals and alloys. The processing conditions may be chosen so as to minimize or promote the dissolution of these particles in the melted substrate, leading to a wide variety of metallurgi- cal structures and properties [2]. Moreover, the surface layers produced by this process differ from those pro-duced by numerous deposition techniques in that there is no discontinuity in the chemical and mechanical properties at the coating-substrate interface. Therefore laser alloying has been successfully used to improve the superficial hardness of various stainless steels by incorpo-rating carbides [2-41 or borides [S]. The aim of this study was to investigate whether carbide-reinforced layers could be produced on AISI