Considering the use of niobium and titanium to enhance electrical and mechanical properties of copper at higher operational temperature application

Abstract

Electrical energy transmission materials (cables) are required to have a good combination of high-strength and high electrical conductivity properties, to avoid loss of electrical power between places of production and places of usage. In this study, pure Copper (Cu), Niobium (Nb) and Titanium (Ti) powders of the same purity and particles sizes of 99.0% and − 325 meshes respectively, were used. Niobium and titanium were added to the matrix of pure copper to form the specimens (Cu-2wt% Nb, Cu-5wt% Nb, Cu-2 wt% Ti and Cu-5wt% Ti), were consolidated at sintering temperature of 650 °C by the use of spark plasma sintering (SPS) techniques. Their electrical conductivity, densities, relative densities, hardness, corrosion, wear resistance and microstructure was investigated in this study. The results show that addition of 2 and 5 volume percent of Nb improved the electrical conductivity of Cu at elevated temperature, strength, corrosion and wear resistance of Cu better than that of titanium. Also addition of 2 volume percent of Ti was observed to improve the electrical conductivity of Cu and was stable at elevated temperature just like Cu-2wt% Nb and Cu-5wt% Nb. However, the study revealed that niobium addition to Cu will give better electrical conductivity and mechanical properties improvement than titanium in electrical cables applications.