A novel method for preparing ultrafine molybdenum‑rhenium alloy powders

Abstract

To address the issues of large particle size and poor particle size uniformity in the traditional two-step hydrogen reduction method for preparing molybdenum‑rhenium alloy powders, this study innovatively employed glucose as the carbon source and successfully prepared ultrafine molybdenum‑rhenium alloy powders through wet-wet mixing, evaporative crystallization, calcination, carbothermal pre-reduction, and hydrogen deep reduction steps. The results demonstrate that when the C/(Mo + Re) molar ratio is 0.7, the powders synthesized through carbon‑hydrogen synergistic reduction exhibit a spherical shape, with particle sizes distributed in the sub-micrometer range and an average particle size of 173 nm. The phase composition of the reduction powders consists predominantly of molybdenum, rhenium and χ phases, with a uniform distribution of alloy elements. In contrast, the powders synthesized using the traditional two-step hydrogen reduction method exhibit irregular, porous and loosely-packed structures, with particle sizes in tens of microns range and slightly larger than those of the precursor. This method is highly suitable for preparing high-purity, ultrafine, and highly homogeneous binary alloy powders, like MoRe, MoW, WRe, ect.