Relationship Between Iron Whisker Growth and Doping Amount of Oxide During Fe2O3 Reduction

Abstract

Iron whisker growth during Fe2O3 doped with oxide reduced by CO was investigated by using in situ observation and scanning electron microscopy. The results indicated that the minimum doping amount (MDA) of various oxides, hindering the iron whisker growth, was different. The MDA of Al2O3, Li2O, Na2O, and K2O was 0.5, 0.4, 4, and 12 pct, respectively. From the reduction rate, it was found that Li2O, MgO, and Al2O3 had some suppressive effects on the Fe2O3 reduction process, thus, confining the growth of iron whisker. However, other oxides had some catalytic effects on the Fe2O3 reduction process (Fe2O3-Fe3O4-FeO-Fe), such as CaO, SrO, BaO, Na2O, and K2O. As long as their doping amount was enough, these oxides could inhibit the diffusion of the Fe atom. When the metal ionic radius in doped oxide was bigger than that of Fe3+, such as Ca2+, Sr2+, Ba2+, Na+, and K+, there were lots of spaces left in Fe2O3 doped with oxide after reduction, improving Fe atom diffusion. Consequently, their MDA was more than that of small radius to restrain the growth of iron whisker. Finally, the relationship between corresponding metal ionic radius, electron layer number, valence electron number, and MDA of oxide was expressed by using data fitting as follows: $$ N_{{{\text{A}}_{y} {\text{O}}_{x} }} = 1.3 \times 10^{ - 5} \times \frac{{r_{{{\text{A}}^{x + } }}^{2} \times \sqrt {n_{{{\text{A}}^{x + } }} } }}{{f_{q} }} $$