Enhanced surface hardness by boron implantation in Nitinol alloy.

Boron implantation into Nitinol alloy has a potential for developing improved Nitinol root canal instruments with excellent cutting properties, without affecting their superelastic bulk-mechanical properties. The surface hardness of nickel-titanium (NiTi) alloy, also known as "Nitinol" (50 atm% nickel+50 atm% titanium), has been improved by ion-beam surface modification. With an implantation dose of 4.8 x 10(17) boron/cm2, a high concentration of boron (30 atm%) is incorporated into NiTi alloy by 110 keV boron ions at room temperature (25 degrees C). Boron-implanted and unimplanted (pure) Nitinol alloys show surface hardness of 7.6 +/- 0.2 and 3.2 +/- 0.2 GPa, respectively, at the nanoindentation depth of 0.05 micron. The ion-beam-modified NiTi alloy exceeds the surface hardness of stainless steel.