The Research on ODS Iron Powder by Sol-Gel Method

Abstract

Oxide dispersion strengthened (ODS) ferritic steel which contains Y2O3 dispersion is one of the most promising candidates for fast neutron reactor cladding materials due to its excellent swelling resistance to neutron and superior creep resistance in high temperature. There are many ways to prepare ODS ferritic steel and the most commonly used method is mechanical alloying. However, ODS ferritic steel produced by the method of mechanical alloying is poor in the plasticity and impact property. Moreover, the anisotropies of structure and properties are obvious in the follow-up processing. In this paper, in order to reduce the cost, iron powder is used as raw material instead of ferritic steel powder. The complexing sol-gel method is adopted to prepare ODS iron-powder. There are many advantages of the sol-gel method such as the small size of disperse phase and the high uniformity. Besides, it is easy to control the conditions of reaction such as the water content, the bath temperature and the PH value. The gel-coated iron powder can be prepared under the appropriate environmental conditions. Then, we can obtain iron powder with Y2O3 dispersion after heating and reducing the gel-coated iron powder. By the spark plasma sintering(SPS), the ODS iron powder can be densified and we can observe the microstructure and test the performance. The results reveal the Y2O3 dispersion of ODS iron-powder by sol-gel method is uniform and the mechanical property is excellent.