Improved mechanical and wear properties of Cu-Ga-In ternary alloys through liquid reinforcement

Abstract

In this work, novel Cu-Ga-In alloys are designed with systematic variation in the liquid and solid solution phases to mimic the nature-inspired structures and their properties. A combination of characterization techniques such as X-ray Diffraction (XRD), Optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and 3D X-ray tomography along with thermodynamic calculations confirm the presence of liquid and solid solution phases in the microstructure. The effect of the liquid phase in increasing the ductility and toughness is clearly demonstrated in the present study. It is shown that the liquid phase can arrest the crack movement during the fracture that leads to improved toughness in the Cu-Ga-In based alloys. Moreover, the presence of the liquid phase also improves the wear properties of these alloys. The present alloys exhibited better hardness and reasonable yield strength compared to the existing Cu alloys in the literature. Especially Cu65In20Ga15 alloy exhibits the hardness of 660Hv and the yield strength of 335.49 MPa which is higher than conventional copper alloys.