Recent Progress of Oxide/Carbide Dispersion Strengthened W-Based Materials
Tao ZHANG1(), Wei YAN2, Zhuoming XIE1, Shu MIAO1, Junfeng YANG1, Xianping WANG1, Qianfeng FANG1, Changsong LIU1
1 Institute of Solid State Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei 230031, China 2 Experiment Center of Anhui San Lian University, Hefei 230031, China
Cite this article:
Tao ZHANG, Wei YAN, Zhuoming XIE, Shu MIAO, Junfeng YANG, Xianping WANG, Qianfeng FANG, Changsong LIU. Recent Progress of Oxide/Carbide Dispersion Strengthened W-Based Materials. Acta Metall Sin, 2018, 54(6): 831-843.
Tungsten (W) plays an important role in the defense industry, aerospace and nuclear industry due to its excellent properties such as high melting point (3410 ℃), high density (19.35 g/cm3), high hardness, high elastic modulus, high thermal conductivity, low expansion coefficient and low vapor pressure. However, its disadvantages, such as low temperature brittleness (ductile brittle transition temperature usually above 400 ℃), low tensile strength, recrystallization embrittlement, high thermal load induced cracking and irradiation embrittlement, affected seriously its processing and servicing performance. Focusing on these problems, carbides/oxide dispersion strengthened W alloys were studied widely. The mechanical properties and other service properties of W were significantly improved by nano scale carbide/oxide dispersion strengthening and microstructure optimization. This article mainly reviews carbide and oxide dispersion strengthening design and the corresponding W-based materials preparation, microstructure and properties of regulation and service performance evaluation, introduces the latest progress of the research and development of the authors' team, and looks forward to the future development trend and the problems to be solved.
Fund: Supported by National Key Research and Development Program of China (No.2017YFA0402800), National Magnetic Confinement Fusion Program (No.2015GB112000) and National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos.11735015, 11575241 and 51771184)
Table 1 Tensile properties at room temperature (RT) ~400 ℃ of different W-Y2O3 materials[13,16~21]
Fig.1 The distributions of second phase particles in W-Y2O3 (a~c) and W-Zr-Y2O3 (d~f)[21]
Fig.2 Engineering stress-strain curves of W-TiC plates as rolled and annealed for 1 h at 1400, 1500 and 1600 ℃[29]
Fig.3 The combination energy of Zr—C, Zr—N and Zr—O in W matrix (1X, 2X and 3X represent the nearest-neighbor, sub-neighbor atom and third-neighbor atoms, respectively)
Specimen
UTS (MPa) / TE (%)
400 ℃
500 ℃
600 ℃
700 ℃
W
-
-
209*/-
348/11.6±0.4
W-0.2%ZrC
-
457*/-
455/27.6±0.4
419/30.0±0.4
W-0.5%ZrC
-
572*/-
588/17.6±0.4
535/24.8±0.4
W-1.0%ZrC
-
667*/-
798/8.4±0.4
731/10.4±0.4
Table 2 Tensile properties at different temperatures of W-ZrC prepared by SPS with different compositions[36]
Fig.4 Tensile curves of W-0.5%ZrC rod (a) and patch with 1 mm thickness (b)[40] at different temperatures (DBTT—ductile-brittle transition temperature)
Fig.5 Three point bending curves (a) and tensile curves (b) of W-0.5%ZrC at different temperatures[39]
W material
Technology
DBTT / K
Test method
Ref.
W-0.5ZrC (R-R-WZC) (8.5 mm thick plate)
Rolling
373
3PB
[30]
W-2Y2O3 (S-WY) (2 mm thick, ?95 mm)
Hot Forging
473
3PB
[34]
Pure W (Rolled W) (10 mm thick plate)
Rolling
473
3PB
[33]
Pure W (HIPed W) (4 mm thick)
HIP
473
3PB
[33]
W-0.2TiC (1 mm thick)
Forging+Rolling
440
3PB
[9]
W-0.25Ti-0.05C (1 mm thick plate)
Rolling
260
3PB
[9]
W-1%Y2O3
Injection molding
1273
Charpy
[11]
Pure W
Injection molding
1173
Charpy
[11]
W-0.5TiC
HIP+Forging
484
3PB
[35]
WL10 (W-1%La2O3)
Swaging+Rolling
973
Charpy
[36]
Pure W (0.1 mm thick foil)
Rolling+Joinning
373
Charpy
[37]
Table 3 The DBTT of R-R-WZC alloys in comparison with other W materials[9,11,30,33~37]
Fig.6 Tensile stress-strain curves of W (a~d) and W-ZrC (a1~d1) as rolled and annealed at different temperatures[41]
Fig.7 Distribution of grain/particle sizes (d) and microstructures of W-0.5%ZrC[39] (a) high magnification BSESEM image showing the W grains possess equiaxed structure. The black contrast dots correspond to the second phase particles (b) grain size distribution of W grain size(c) grain size distribution of ZrC particle inside W grain(d) grain size distribution of ZrC and W-ZrC-C-O particles at grain boundary (GBs—grain boundaries)
Fig.8 Interface relationships between W matrix and ZrC in W-0.5%ZrC[39] (a) HRTEM image of W matrix and ZrC phase (intragranular) as viewed along [001](b) the SAEDP revealing the particle with a face centered cubic structure(c) fast Fourier transform (FFT) pattern of selected red square area A on ZrC in Fig.8a(d) FFT pattern of selected red square area B in Fig.8a at the interface area between W and ZrC. It is clear that the particle-matrix phase boundaries have coherent structure like showing in high magnification of Fig.8e
Fig.9 Temperature dependence of thermal conductivity of as rolled and annealed W-0.5%ZrC at different temperatures, ITER grade W and nano grained W-TiC[45]
Fig.10 Surface morphologies of W-ZrC material thermal shocked by transient electron beam with different energies[39]
Fig.11 The surface and cross-section (inset) morphologies of different W materials after 220 eV He+ irradiation at 900 ℃ (a~c) and 620 eV He+ irradiation at 1000 ℃ (d~f)[44] (a, d) powder metallurgy (PM) W (b, e) chemical vopor deposition (CVD) W (c) W-1%Y2O3 (f) W-0.5%ZrC
Exp. condition
Tested material
Surface morphology
Thickness of modified
layer / nm
He+ energy 220 eV
PM-W
Pin hole structure
About 150
Flux: about 1.4×1026 m-2s-1
CVD-W
Pin hole structure
About 180
Total fluence: 1×1026 atomsm-2
W-1%Y2O3
Pin hole structure
About 120
Sample temperature: (900±100) ℃
W-1%Y2O3
Pin hole structure
About 80
W-1%La2O3
About 100
W-0.5%ZrC
About 75
He+ energy: 620 eV
PM-W
Coral-like structure
About 200
Flux: about 1.4×1026 m-2s-1
CVD-W
Coral-like structure
About 175
Total fluence: 1×1026 atomsm-2
W-1%Y2O3
Coral-like structure
About 220
Sample temperature: (1000±100) ℃
W-1%Y2O3
Coral-like structure
About 140
W-1%La2O3
Coral-like structure
About 200
W-0.5%ZrC
Pin hole structure
About 120
Table 4 Summary of low-energy and high-flux He ion irradiation for different W materials[44]
Fig.12 The tensile curves of W-Ta-C (a) and W-TaC (b) at different temperatures[48]
Fig.13 Temperature dependence of UTS of different W based materials[49]
Fig.14 Surface morphologies of different W materials after flux 5×1021 ions/(m2s), fluence 7.02×1025 ions/m2, 90 eV D+ and 200 ℃ irradiation
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