Impact of Gold Ions on Nanohardness and Various Characteristics of G-metal Alloy Surface

Impact of Gold Ions on Nanohardness and Various Characteristics of G-metal Alloy Surface

Metals and Materials International

10.1007/s12540-025-01954-3

https://doi.org/10.1007/s12540-025-01954-3

Qaneeta Younas, Khurram Siraj, Thomas Osipowicz, Samia Naeem, Yakai Zhao, Cheng Cheh Tan, Shazia Bashir, Tanveer Ashraf, Saba Mushtaq, Muhammad Shahzad Abdul Rahim, Muhammad Mustafa Dastageer, Breara Muhammad Hussain

28 May 2025

Younas, Q., Siraj, K., Osipowicz, T., Naeem, S., Zhao, Y., Tan, C. C., Bashir, S., Ashraf, T., Mushtaq, S., Rahim, M. S. A., Dastageer, M. M., & Hussain, B. M. (2025). Impact of Gold Ions on Nanohardness and Various Characteristics of G-metal Alloy Surface. Metals and Materials International. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12540-025-01954-3

Mechanically polished Gun-metal (G-metal) alloy specimens were irradiated using a 2 MeV Au+ beam of Pelletron Linear Accelerator. The range of Au+ fluence was 5 × 1011 to 1 × 1014 Au+/cm2. XRD patterns revealed the crystallographic peaks of Cu, Zn, and Sn. Harris analysis demonstrated that the Au+ fluence strongly influenced the preference of crystal plane alignment. The structural attributes like crystallite size, strain, etc. change as the Au+ fluence varies. Due to the low depth of ion-induced defects region, the estimation of ion irradiated material surface hardening is difficult. So, the technique of nanoindentation used in this work proves helpful for estimating the surface hardness of ion irradiated material. The surface hardness of specimens varied with the Au+ fluence and indentation depth. A significant increase in surface roughness, nanoindentation surface hardness, and elastic modulus values was observed at 5 × 1013 Au+/cm2 irradiation. Moreover, the surface hardness improves with decreasing crystallite size, reflecting the Hall-Petch relation. Energy dispersive X-ray (EDX) and Proton-induced X-ray emission (PIXE) were used for elemental analysis of specimens before and after Au+ irradiation.

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

There was no specific funding for the research done

Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.

https://oar.a-star.edu.sg/communities-collections/articles/21860

1598-9623
2005-4149

Institute of Materials Research & Engineering