Precise control of oxygen for titanium-zirconium-molybdenum alloy

Abstract

Organic carbon has been used as a reducing agent to reduce the oxygen content in the TZM (Titanium-Zirconium-Molybdenum) alloys for the first time. The TZM alloys were prepared by the powder metallurgy sintered by hydrogen and vacuum, respectively. With increasing the organic carbon content from 0.04 wt% to 0.8 wt%, the influence of organic carbon content and sintering methods on the oxygen content of TZM alloys and their action mechanism were studied. The results show that the oxygen content of TZM alloy sintered by hydrogen decreases significantly with the increase of organic carbon. The oxygen content is as low as 300 ppm when the organic carbon is 0.8 wt%. The oxygen content of the TZM alloy varies between 50 ppm and 110 ppm under vacuum sintering. When the oxygen content decreases, the secondary phase particles precipitated in the alloy decrease the alloy's hardness due to the weakening effect of solution strengthening and secondary phase strengthening. The density of TZM alloy decreases with increasing organic carbon, whether in vacuum or hydrogen sintering. Verification experiments confirm the accuracy of the conclusion. As the oxygen content decreases from more than 3000 ppm to less than 1000 ppm, the secondary phase particles in the TZM alloy changed from mostly TiO2 and ZrO2 to Ti/Zr composite oxide particles containing zirconium-rich stripes. In the state of the lowest oxygen content, only zirconia was found in the matrix