Abstract
In this work, TiC–Cu composites containing 20 and 30 vol % of nano-sized titanium carbide (TiC) particles were prepared by powder metallurgy using copper powders with micrometer-sized and nanometer-sized particles. Mixtures of TiC and Cu powders were ball milled for 10 h and spark plasma sintered at 800–900 °C under an applied pressure of 50 MPa. The relative density of the sintered composites was 95.0%–96.5%. The composites fractured in a ductile mode. The crystallite size of the copper matrix in the composites prepared using the nanometer-sized copper powder was smaller than that in composites prepared using the micrometer-sized copper powder, which was confirmed by transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The hardness of the composites increased as the sintering temperature was increased from 800 to 900 °C. When the TiC content increased from 20 to 30 vol %, the hardness of the composites obtained from the micrometer-sized copper powder and sintered at 900 °C increased from 284 to 315 HV, while in composites obtained from the nanometer-sized copper, the hardness decreased from 347 to 337 HV.
Highlights
Copper is widely used as a material for electrical contacts due to its high electrical and thermal conductivities, low cost, and good corrosion resistance
Mechanical milling of the titanium carbide (TiC)–Cu powder mixtures resulted in the formation of composite agglomerates
Conclusions obtained by ball milling and spark plasma sintering (SPS) using two copper powders with different particle sizes
Summary
Copper is widely used as a material for electrical contacts due to its high electrical and thermal conductivities, low cost, and good corrosion resistance. It is generally accepted that a finer size of the reinforcing particles is desirable for improving the mechanical properties of the metal matrix composites Another possibility to achieve a better mechanical performance of TiC–Cu is to use copper powders with different particle sizes. TiC–Cu composites were prepared by high-energy ball milling and spark plasma sintering (SPS) This sintering technique has gained a reputation of a versatile method of fast consolidation of powder materials [14,15,16,17,18]. The SPS method proves effective for consolidating composite powders This works is aimed at investigating the influence of the size of the starting copper powders on the microstructure and hardness of the spark plasma sintered TiC–Cu composites
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