This paper is an invited review of the work undertaken by the present authors and their colleagues listed in the references, using surface engineering to enhance the surface properties of low alloy and microalloyed steels through the addition of ceramic powders.The background to the present projects emanated from work on particulate metal matrix composities (MMC's), which in the 1960's, grew from the development of cermets, at that time a new generation of composite materials designed to have optimal properties, including high temperature resistance and the hardness of a ceramic combined with the ability to undergo plastic deformation like a metal. Generally, the metallic elements used as a binder were nickel, molybdenum, and cobalt, and while cermets, comprised by volume < 20% metal, MMC's normally have ≥80% of metal. Both can be manufactured by a sintering process [1,2]. A more recent version of cermets are MAX phases, some comprising ternary carbides and nitrides of aluminium or titanium alloys [3,4].