Preparation and properties of Al2O3 dispersed fine-grained W-Cu alloy

Abstract

In this study, high-performance fine-grained W-Cu sintered blocks with the addition of dispersed Al2O3 particles were successfully produced by low temperature liquid-phase sintering, using the raw material of ultrafine W-Cu alloy powder. The ultrafine W-Cu alloy powder was obtained by a two-step reduction process composed of stages of carbothermal reaction and hydrogen deep deoxidation. The fine Al2O3 grains with uniform distribution in W-Cu alloy were introduced by spray method, leading to the decrease of W grain size and W-W connectivity. The relative densities of all sintered blocks were>97%, and a higher degree of densification ensures that the alloy has excellent comprehensive properties. With the increase of Al2O3 content, W grain size and W-W connectivity of sintered W-Cu samples decrease from 664 nm to 472 nm and 0.2 to 0.14, respectively. The W-Cu alloy with the ultimate tensile strength of 415 MPa and the highest elongation of 7.22% was obtained when the addition amount of Al2O3 was 0.5 wt%. At the same time, it also possessed the maximum bending strength of 1028 MPa and microhardness of 312 HV, respectively. In addition, due to the good network structure of Cu and uniform three-phase distribution, the sintered samples had excellent conductivity and compressive strength.