Pulsed Laser Nitriding of Stainless Steel at Atmospheric Pressure

A novel nitriding method using a pulsed laser was developed to resolve several shortcomings of conventional nitriding: difficulty of local processing and batch processing, and the need for high-temperature treatment. Specifically, this report describes pulsed laser nitriding of stainless steel at atmospheric pressure using only nitrogen gas. The samples were irradiated at 20 kHz by a focused beam（spot diameter 0.7 μm）of 355 nm laser pulses（