White Paper

Surface engineering, or surface treatment, can be defined as the design of surface composition and substrate together as a functionally graded system to give a cost effective performance enhancement of which neither is capable on its own - or, more simply, as altering the surface for advantage.

This includes both physical and chemical treatments, applied coatings, including multilayer coatings, and the chemical and physical characterisation of the affected surface zone. 

In this white paper, we review some of the industrial applications of surface engineering and the techniques used to define the topography and chemical composition of the surface and subsurface regions.