The technological advances in areas such as automotive and aerospace industries require materials capable of withstanding demanding conditions. Surface treatments are effective tools to improve the surface properties of materials while preserving their bulk properties. Besides many conventional processes, laser treatments are efficient methods for hardening and increasing the durability of materials. This work is focused on the growth of titanium oxynitride surface layers by laser irradiation of pure titanium plates with nanosecond pulsed sources. The influence of the laser treatment conditions on the composition and the structure of these surface layers was studied. In particular, for laser treatments in air, it was shown that the use of infrared sources, instead of visible ones, increases the nitrogen concentration in the surface layers. Three kinds of gas mixtures (N2-O2, O2-Ar et N2-Ar) were used for studying the influence of the reactive atmosphere. The competition between the insertion mechanisms of nitrogen and oxygen was shown. Finally, the tribological behavior of laser treated samples was studied by fretting tests and compared with titanium oxynitride layers obtained by physical vapor deposition, taken as a model system because of their high in-depth homogeneity
