Obtaining Intermetallic Compound Copper-Tin: Plasma Dynamic Synthesis and Spark Plasma Sintering

Abstract

The intermetallic compound tin-copper (Cu-Sn) is widely used in the creation of high-quality bearings, electric conductive lubricants, 3D printers. However, when connecting two metals, the bond between atoms in the lattice becomes covalent or ionic. This leads to the fact that the material becomes more brittle. Additionally, the production of intermetallic compounds is cost-based in terms of both material resources and money. In this paper, the ceramics has been sintered based on the intermetallic copper-tin powders, obtained by plasma dynamic method. The raw powdered materials based on Cu-Sn were obtained using a coaxial magnetoplasma accelerator with copper electrodes by adding the crushed tin into the accelerator. Using X-ray diffractometry (XRD) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) analyses, the presence of such phases as copper Cu and tin-copper Cu41Sn11 in the obtained material has been confirmed. Further, such-synthesized powdered products were used to obtain bulk samples using the spark plasma sintering technology at various sintering parameters. Images from scanning electron microscope showed a uniform sintering of the product at the sintering temperature of 440 °C under a pressure of 60 MPa. It was found that the sintered intermetallic ceramics has the Vickers hardness equal to 120 Hv. The obtained sample has the lower friction coefficient and the smaller wear area in comparison with the sample, made of pure copper.