High-density stacking faults in a supersaturated nitrided layer on austenitic stainless steel

The nitrogen-supersaturated phase produced by low-temperature plasma-assisted nitriding of austenitic stainless steel usually contains a high density of stacking faults. However, the stacking fault density observed in previous studies was considerably lower than that determined by fitting the X-ray diffraction pattern. In this work, it has been confirmed by high-resolution transmission electron microscopy that the strip-shaped regions of about 3–25 nm in width observed at relatively low magnification essentially consist of a series of stacking faults on every second {111} atomic plane. A microstructure model of the clustered stacking faults embedded in a face-centred cubic structure was built for these regions. The simulated X-ray diffraction and transmission electron microscopy results based on this model are consistent with the observations.