Abstract
Zirconium carbide (ZrC) reinforced tungsten (W) composite was hot-pressed at 2200 °C for 1 h in vacuum, which was subsequently heat treated in the temperature range of 2200 to 2500 °C for 1.5 or 2 h. The relative ratios of ZrC phase were 21.0, 23.3 and 25.9 mol.% for the mixture of starting powders, composites sintered for 1 h and solid-solution treated at 2500 °C for 1.5 h, respectively. The solid solubility of W in ZrC increased with the increment in heat-treating temperature and time to a maximum value of 18.9 mol.% at 2500 °C for 1.5 h. The lattice parameter of cubic ZrC phase diminished from 0.4682 nm in the starting powder to 0.4642 nm in the solid-solution composite treated at 2500 °C for 1.5 h. This work demonstrated that the relationship between the solid solubility of W in ZrC and the lattice parameter of ZrC is linear, with a slope of −1.93 × 10−4 nm/at.%. Overall, more W atoms diffused into ZrC lattice after heat treatment, meanwhile, the previous precipitated nano-sized W dissolved in the supersaturated (Zr,W)C solid-solution, as detected by SEM and TEM.
Highlights
Zirconium carbide (ZrC) is an important material for high temperature applications due to its high melting temperature, high Vickers hardness and excellent corrosion resistance[1,2,3,4]
Work has hardly been reported on accessing similar structures via solid-solution processing followed by subsequent ageing to obtain the nano-particle reinforced carbide systems, it is common in Al or Mg alloys[29,30,31]
As demonstrated in Wang’s study[10, 11], the shift of ZrC diffraction peak comes from formation of (Zr1−yWy)Cx solid-solution, x for ZrC appearing as a nonstoichiometric compound
Summary
ZrC is an important material for high temperature applications due to its high melting temperature, high Vickers hardness and excellent corrosion resistance[1,2,3,4]. The research were mainly focused on the effect of sintering temperature, ZrC content and particle size on microstructure and mechanical properties of W-ZrC composites both at room and elevated temperatures. Work has hardly been reported on accessing similar structures via solid-solution processing followed by subsequent ageing to obtain the nano-particle reinforced carbide systems, it is common in Al or Mg alloys[29,30,31]. W-ZrC composites with 21.0 mol% ZrC were fabricated by hot-pressing and subsequent solid-solution treatment at different temperatures for different time. Both qualitative and quantitative XRD analyses were performed to identify the final phase constitution of the heat-treated composites. The target of this study was to characterize the effect of both the temperature and time on phase evolution and ZrC lattice-parameter variation in the studied W-ZrC composites
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