ABSTRACT
The most well-known posttreatment for nickel-phosphorus coatings is heat treatment but thermochemical treatments, mostly in the form of nitriding treatments, have also been investigated. This chapter describes the usual conditions for heat treating of electroless nickel-boron-coated samples and the effect of the posttreatment on the coating. Heat treatments are the most popular type of posttreatment that can be applied to nickel-boron coatings. The aim of heat-treating electroless nickel-boron coatings is usually to increase their mechanical properties so there’s an abundant literature on the effect of heat treatment on hardness and optimization of treatment conditions. Several studies attribute hardening of electroless nickel-boron to the creation of grain boundaries in the originally amorphous materials and to Hall-Petch effect. While several studies have investigated the roughness of as-deposited electroless nickel-boron coatings, the effect of heat treatment on this specific parameter has been rarely investigated.
