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Heat treatment is very simply, what makes a knife functional.
Whether a blade is ground out using stock removal methods, forged to shape by fire and hammer or just stamped from a sheet of steel and so on, all blades must undergo some phase of heat treatment. So, it needs some sort of resistance to abrasion to continue to cut well. By heating the steel, the goal is to arrive at the critical temperature. This is the moment the carbon atoms, which are located in the spaces between iron atoms, dissolve into the iron and create a form called, austenite. However, if it is cooled rapidly, austenite forms a very hard, needle like structure called martensite.