Effects of rare earths in borax salt bath immersion vanadium carbide coating process on steel substrate

Various amounts of FeSiRe23, which were used as reducing agents, were added into typical borax salt bath used in thermal diffusion (TD) process to explore the effects of rare earths on borax salt bath vanadizing process and microstructure and properties of vanadium carbide coating. The effect results of rare earths on coating thicknesses at different process conditions showed that the right amount of rare earths could greatly accelerate vanadizing rate and that the accelerating effect worked mainly at the initial stage of TD process and decreased with increasing thickness of vanadium carbide layer. Moreover, the comparison of diffusion activation energies at various temperatures revealed that rare earths have optimal accelerating effect at 950 °C or so. The effect results of rare earths on coating microstructure and properties showed that the addition of rare earths into the borax salt bath can decrease grain size and improve fragility of vanadium carbide coating but decrease coating microhardness. And the electron probe microanalysis (EPMA) revealed that the addition of rare earths could decrease carbon concentration in the coating.