Rapid fabrication of ultra-fine grain intermetallic compound powder in milliseconds under ultrasonic vibrations

Abstract

As a key raw material for industrial production and scientific research, intermetallic compounds (IMCs) powder has broad application prospects, and it has a performance breakthrough in its nanocrystalline state. Crystallized metallic glasses (MGs) are a class of IMCs, its powder has great potentials for electromagnetic conversion, catalysis, exhaust treatment and biomedical application. Although many powder fabrication methods exist, a simple, fast method to prepare ultra-fine grain IMC powders is still being pursued. Here we report a facile method to fabricate ultra-fine grain (<5 nm) crystallized MGs powder by ultrasonic vibration treatment (UVT). At room temperature and well below the ultimate material strength, UVT can rapidly breaks bulk crystallized MGs down to micron and nanoscale powders. Compared to other methods, UVT has an outstanding time advantage in within 60 s (1000 times faster than the ball milling). The experimental show that UVT causes rapid grain refinement in crystallized MGs, inducing fatigue crack nucleation at the grain boundaries (GBs) and then smash in milliseconds. Our results provide a fast and cost-efficient method for the production of micro and nano scale ultra-fine grain IMC powders.