Abstract
Cu-Ni-Si alloys are widely used in lead frames and vacuum devices due to their high electrical conductivity and strength. In this paper, a Cu-Ni-Co-Si-Cr-(Ce) alloy was prepared by vacuum induction melting. Hot compression tests of the Cu-Ni-Co-Si-Cr and Cu-Ni-Co-Si-Cr-Ce alloys were carried out using a Gleeble-1500 simulator at 500–900 °C deformation temperatures and 0.001–10 s−1 strain rates. The texture change was analyzed by electron backscatter diffraction. The <110> fiber component dominated the texture after compression, and the texture intensity was reduced during recrystallization. Moreover, the average misorientation angle φ for Cu-Ni-Co-Si-Cr-Ce (11°) was lower than that of Cu-Ni-Co-Si-Cr (16°) under the same conditions. Processing maps were developed to determine the optimal processing window. The microstructure and precipitates of the Cu-Ni-Co-Si-Cr and Cu-Ni-Co-Si-Cr-Ce alloys were also analyzed. The average grain size of the Cu-Ni-Co-Si-Cr-Ce alloy (48 μm) was finer than that of the Cu-Ni-Co-Si-Cr alloy (80 μm). The average size of precipitates in the Cu-Ni-Co-Si-Cr alloy was 73 nm, while that of the Cu-Ni-Co-Si-Cr-Ce alloy was 27 nm. The addition of Ce delayed the occurrence of dynamic recrystallization.
Highlights
High electrical conductivity functional materials have been widely used in lead frames, in the electronics industry, and in electrical vacuum devices
In the process of hot deformation, many low angle grain boundaries occur at low temperature (Figure 6a), which results in the aggregation of dislocations in the deformed grain boundaries and work hardening regions
Compared with the Cu-Ni-Co-Si-Cr-Ce alloy produced using the same method, the average misorientation angle φ increased from 8◦ to 11◦, as shown in Figure 7c,d, and the percentage of high angle grain boundaries increased from 11% to 19% with temperature
Summary
High electrical conductivity functional materials have been widely used in lead frames, in the electronics industry, and in electrical vacuum devices. In the past few years, Cu-Ni-Si alloy has become one of the most rapidly developing copper alloys [1,2,3,4,5,6] Trace elements, such as Co [7], P [8], Cr [9,10], Ag [11], Ti [12], and so on, have been added to further improve its properties. The addition of rare-earth elements significantly improves the alloy properties. Zhang et al [17,18] investigated the effects of the addition of Ce and Y on the evolution of the microstructure and precipitates in a Cu-Mg alloy during hot deformation, and found that it could significantly delay dynamic recrystallization and increase the flow stress. Hot deformation of materials is the basis of thermal processing and is widely applied in manufacturing to improve alloy properties. The effect of the addition of Ce on the dislocation density and texture changes were investigated by electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD)
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