Martensitic stainless steel Martensitic stainless steel Martensitic stainless steel is a specific type of stainless steel alloy. Stainless steels may be classified by their crystalline structure into three main types: "austenitic", "ferritic" and "martensitic". Martensitic stainless steels can be high- or low-carbon steels built around the Type 410 composition of iron, 12% chromium, and up to 1.2% carbon. They are hardenable by heat treatment (specifically by quenching, or by quenching and tempering). The alloy composition, and the high cooling rate of quenching enable the formation of martensite. Tempered martensite gives steel good hardness and high toughness; used largely for medical tools (scalpels, razors
Stainless steel Becket were industrializing ferritic stainless steel. In 1912, Elwood Haynes applied for a US patent on a martensitic stainless steel alloy, which was not granted until 1919. In 1912, Harry Brearley of the Brown-Firth research laboratory in Sheffield, England, while seeking a corrosion-resistant alloy for gun barrels, discovered and subsequently industrialized a martensitic stainless steel alloy. The discovery was announced two years later in a January 1915 newspaper article in "The New York Times". The metal was later marketed under the "Staybrite" brand by Firth Vickers in England and was used for the new entrance canopy for the Savoy Hotel