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To develop an ultra-high-temperature resistant coating for a reusable thermal protection system, the preparation of a tantalum-based MoSi2-Mo coating by a new two-step process of multi-arc ion plating and halide activated pack cementation is presented. The coating has a dense structure and is well compatible with the tantalum substrate, which can be thermally shocked from room temperature to 1750 °C for 360 cycles without failure. The mechanism of the coating’s excellent resistance to high-temperature thermal shocks is that a strong-binding gradient interface and a dense SiO2 oxide scale with good oxygen resistance are formed by the high-temperature self-diffusion of Si.

Tantalum (Ta) alloys are important ultra-high-temperature structural materials owing to their excellent high-temperature mechanical properties and processability. However, they exhibit poor high-temperature oxidation resistance. In this study, a dense MoSi2 ceramic coating was prepared on a Ta substrate using an innovative multi-arc ion plating process and halide activated pack cementation in order to improve its ultra-high-temperature oxidation resistance. This ceramic coating exhibited a low roughness space arithmetic (287.1 ± 26.3 nm) and a dense structure. The relationship between the thickness of the coating and the duration of pack-cementation at 1250 ℃ was parabolic. The coating had a service life of more than 12 h at 1750 ℃, and showed excellent high-temperature oxidation resistance because of the uniform and dense structure of the coating and the rapid formation of a dense SiO2 layer with low O2 permeability during high-temperature oxidation.

To protect refractory metal against oxidation at ultra-high temperatures, a MoSi2-TaSi2 ceramic coating was prepared on a pure tantalum (Ta) substrate using a novel three-step process, which included dip-coating with a molybdenum slurry, vacuum sintering, and halide-activated pack cementation (HAPC). The original coating had a MoSi2-TaSi2 double-layer structure from the surface to the substrate. After oxidation at 1700°C for 8 h in air, the coating exhibited a complex multi-layer structure composed of SiO2-Mo5Si3-MoSi2-(Mo,Ta)5Si3-TaSi2-Ta5Si3 from the outer layer to the inner layer, due to the high-temperature phase transition and diffusion of Si and O. The coating effectively protected the Ta substrate at 1700°C for 12 h without failure, thereby demonstrating great improvement to its service life in an ultra-high-temperature aerobic environment. The protective effect was attributed to the integrity of the ceramic coating and the formation of a dense, uniform SiO2 film that effectively lowered the inward oxygen diffusion rate.

The dispersion of WC particles is critical to the microstructures and properties of WC-based alloys. The ultra-fine WC powders were uniformly dispersed in aqueous media via sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) with physical means. The influence of dispersion conditions such as concentration of dispersant, dispersion time and solid-liquid ratio on the powders dispersion was investigated by sedimentation test in present work. The particle size and distribution of WC powders, phase analysis and microstructure were characterized by the laser particle size analyzer, X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and Transmission electron microscope (TEM) and Zeta potential respectively. The results show that SDS was adsorbed and scattered on the WC powders, which could enhance the stability and dispersibility of suspension by the electrostatic effect. The diameter of dispersed WC powders ranged from 0.2 to 0.8 μm. The corresponding dispersive mechanisms of SDS were electrostatic repulsion and static hindrance, which kept the dispersibility and stability of the suspension. Furthermore, the optical dispersing time, solid-liquid ratio and the concentration of SDS for the dispersed WC powders in this work is 3 h, 1:50 and 1.44 g/L, respectively.

A new YSZ (yttria stabilized zirconia) modified silicide coating was prepared on Mo-based alloy through a two-step process, including spraying of Si-Mo-YSZ slurry followed by reaction sintering. Microstructure and oxidation behavior of the coatings with different YSZ content (0, 5, 10 and 15%) were studied. The coating consists of a MoSi2-ZrSi2-SiO2 outer layer and a MoSi2 inner layer. The 10% YSZ modified coating possessed the best oxidation protection at ultra-high temperatures and, for the coating, the mass gain was 0.96 mg/cm2 after being exposed at 1725 °C in air for 22 h, whereas the uncoated Mo-based alloy completely ablated for 0.35 h. The excellent oxidation resistance of the silicide coating was attributed to the compact and self-healing SiO2 protective scale, which contained the dispersed ZrO2 and ZrSiO4. Keywords: Molybdenum-based alloy, Silicide coating, Oxidation, YSZ, MoSi2, Ultra-high temperature

The cobalt coating with an average thickness of 15–20 nm was uniformly plated on the surface of ultra-fine WC powders by electroless plating in the present work. The effects of electroless plating condition parameters on the deposition rate were studied. It was found that the deposition rate increased with the increase of CoSO4·7H2O content, pH value, complexing agent concentration, and bath temperature, while decreased with the increase of reducing agent (NaH2PO2·H2O) concentration. Furthermore, the cobalt deposition rate empirical equation and activation energy were determined. The results show that the activation energy (Ea) for the electroless cobalt on WC substrates is approximately 54.65 kJ/mol.

The microstructures and mechanical properties of powder metallurgy Inconel 718 alloy were investigated in the temperatures range between 25 and − 253 °C. Tensile strength increased with the decrease in temperature, while the ductility first increased and then decreased. There was no significant change in impact toughness. When the temperature was − 253 °C, a zigzag stress–strain curve was observed for the alloy, owing to the interaction of dislocation glide and twinning, which effectively maintained the relatively good ductility.

A new type MoSi 2 /(Mo, Ti)Si 2 dual-phase composite coating for oxidation protection was designed and prepared on molybdenum alloy by a method of fused slurry. High temperature oxidation resistance of the coating has been investigated by isothermal oxidation test. Microstructure evolution and phase transformation of the as-prepared and oxidized coating were characterized. The results show that the composite coating is composed of primary C11 b MoSi 2 and C40 (Mo, Ti)Si 2 phases. The substitution of molybdenum with titanium in MoSi 2 gave (Mo,Ti)Si 2 of the C40 structure, resulting the formation of a C11 b MoSi 2 /C40 (Mo, Ti)Si 2 dual-phase composite coating. The composite coating could provide long term oxidation resistant protection for Mo alloy at high temperature, attributing to the good protection of a Si-Ti-O compound glass formation during oxidation.

A high-temperature oxidation-protective Si-Mo coating on a molybdenum alloy substrate was prepared by slurry sintering method. The structure, composition, phase distribution, and oxidation behavior of the coating were studied. The results show that the coating has a double-layer microstructure with an outer MoSi 2 layer and an inner Mo 5 Si 3 layer. After oxidation, the coating is composed of a SiO 2 outer layer, a MoSi 2 middle layer, and a Mo 5 Si 3 inner layer. The mechanism of the phase distribution and the oxidation kinetic equation were also studied. The oxidation rate K p determined over 12 h at 1650 °C, was found to be 0.061 mg 2 cm − 4 h − 1 . The excellent oxidation protective ability of the coating at ultra-high temperatures is attributable to the formation of self-healing SiO 2 on the coating surface after the oxidation of MoSi 2 .

The stress-aging method is proposed to improve the dimensional stability of Al-Cu-Mg (2024 aluminum) alloy. Both the reduction of residual stress and the acceleration of precipitates are investigated during the stress-aging process. It is observed that some S′ particles precipitate in the alloy during stress-aging. With the external stress increase to 100 MPa, the residual stress and thermal strain (ɛ c ) decrease, while the micro-yield strength increases significantly. This is attributed to that the dislocations are effectively pinned by the uniformly distributed precipitates and the stored elastic energy diminishes remarkably, which leads to a considerable improvement of the dimensional stability of 2024 aluminum alloy. However, when further increases the external stress to 150 MPa, due to the coarsened precipitates, the residual stress and thermal strain increase, while the micro-yield strength decreases slightly.

Ultra-fine WC/Co composite powders were prepared by electroless plating in this study. The Co layers with an average thickness of 50–100 nm were uniformly and completely covered on raw WC particles with a diameter of 0.3–0.5 µm. The influences of electroless plating conditions on the composites were investigated. The Co layer covering on WC particles was controlled by the content of CoSO 4 ·7H 2 O, pH value and bath temperature. With increasing the content of CoSO 4 ·7H 2 O up to 25 g/L, both the weight gain and the plating rate markedly increased. However, when the content of CoSO 4 ·7H 2 O further increased to 30 g/L, while the weight gain displayed a slight decrease, the plating rate continued to increase moderately. Moreover, with the increase of pH value from 9.5 to 11, both the weight gain and the reaction time decreased. Furthermore, the plating rate exhibited an exponential relationship with the bath temperature. When the pH value, bath temperature and the concentration of CoSO 4 ·7H 2 O are 10, 80 °C and 25 g/L respectively, the weight gain of Co-coated WC composite powders is 185.1 mg/g.

Due to the excellent structural and functional properties, such as low density, high fracture toughness and fatigue strength, Al-Cu-Mg (2024 aluminum) alloy has become an attractive light weight material for inertial instruments and aerospace applications. However, it has relatively low dimensional stability. The aim of this investigation is to enhance the dimensional stability of 2024 aluminum alloy via two-stage aging method, and identify the precipitation behavior and the underlying stabilizing mechanisms of 2024 aluminum alloy. When the second aging time was 24 h, the uniformly distributed precipitates could effectively pin the dislocations and impede their movement. This leaded to a significant improvement of the micro-yield strength and the thermal strain in the 2024 aluminum alloy, and thus the dimensional stability of the alloy increased.

The Nb-30Ti-18Al alloys doped with the amounts of 0 at%, 1 at% and 5 at% carbon were prepared by arc melting and annealing. The effects of carbon addition on the microstructure and mechanical properties of Nb ss /Nb 3 Al in situ composites as well as the strengthening mechanisms were investigated. The results showed that during annealing at 1200 °C, supersaturated Nb ss decomposed and Nb 3 Al phase precipitated in C-free alloy, while carbide decomposed with the precipitation of Nb 3 Al in C-doped alloys. Furthermore, the orientation relationship of Nb 3 Al phase and the surrounding (Nb, Ti)C was observed in Nb-30Ti-18Al-5C (NA5) alloy. Additionally, with increasing the carbon content, the compressive strength of alloys at high temperature were improved significantly ascribed to the occurrence of solid solution and volume fraction increase of strengthen phase, while the fracture toughness decreased due to the volume fraction decrease of Nb ss .

Due to excellent chemical stability, high rigidity, superior corrosion and wear resistance, aluminum oxynitride (AlON) has been considered as one of most promising candidate ceramic materials in high-performance structural, advanced abrasives and refractory fields. However, it usually exhibited relatively low flexural strength and poor fracture toughness. The study is aimed to develop silicon carbide (SiC) and zirconium nitride (ZrN) nano-particulate reinforced AlON composites with improved mechanical properties and fracture resistance via a hot-press sintering process. It was found that the addition of ZrO 2 nanoparticles would be transformed into ZrN during sintering. Due to the pinning effect of SiC and ZrN nano-particles positioned at grain boundaries of micro-sized AlON particles, the presence of SiC and ZrN nano-particles resulted in the reduction of both porosity and grain size, and a change of fracture mode from intergranular cracking in AlON to intragranular cracking in composites. With presence of 8 wt% SiC and 5.2 wt% ZrN nano-particles, the relative density, microhardness, Young’s modulus, flexural strength and fracture toughness increased. Different toughening mechanisms including crack bridging, crack branching and crack deflection were observed, thus effectively increasing the crack propagation resistance and leading to a considerable improvement in flexural strength and fracture toughness.

The thermodynamic stability and mechanical properties of titanium carbonitrides TiC x N1−x (0 ⩽ x ⩽ 1) are investigated by a combination of the universal cluster expansion method and the first-principles calculations. By considering the ordering of the N/C distributions on the anion sublattice sites of TiC x N1−x , a binary diagram of the heat of formation is constructed, and seven kinds of ground-state structures are predicted in the whole range of 0 ⩽ x ⩽ 1. These predicted ground-state TiC x N1−x structures are further proved to be dynamically and mechanically stable by examining their phonon dispersion spectra and elastic constants. Further studies indicate that the mechanical and thermodynamic properties of the ternary TiC x N1−x structures are generally better than those of the binary TiC or TiN, while the differences within the ternary systems are insignificant. The possible origin of the enhancement of the mechanical and thermodynamic properties of the predicted ground-state TiC x N1−x are discussed together with the electronic structures.

The in-situ laminated Nb/Nb5Si3 composite was prepared by spark plasma sintering. The microstructures and mechanical properties of the laminated Nb/Nb5Si3 composite were investigated in present work. It could be found that, alternant distribution microstructures of Nbss and Nb5Si3 layers were observed after sintering. The Nb/Nb5Si3 composite exhibited fracture toughness of 11.2 MPa·m1/2, and the predicted fracture toughness was estimated by the Ashby model. Moreover, the deviation of the experimental value from the predicted value was discussed. In addition, the compressive strength of the in-situ laminated Nb/Nb5Si3 composite was measured at 1400 °C and compared with that of the unidirectionally solidified Nb-17.5Si alloy.

Thermal diffusion process (TD) is an important surface modification technique to prepare carbide coating on steel, which can effectively improve the hardness and wear resistance, as well as prolong the service life of the substrate. However, cracking problems are often encountered in the TD processing of high-speed steel. In this work, TD process was used to prepare vanadium carbide coating on M35 high speed steel. The results indicated that the coarse crack after TD treatment was quenching crack. The mechanism of such failure were attributed to the diffusion of elements (mainly C and V) and the volume expansion caused by martensitic transformation during the TD process. Bainite isothermal quenching and three times tempering process were selected as the way of solving this cracking failure. The microstructure and properties of the coating prepared by the improvement process were studied. The coating was composed of fine equiaxial crystals containing V6C5 and VC. The hardness of the coated sample could achieve 2644 HV, which increased greatly compared with uncoated M35 matrix (750 HV), and the friction/wear performance of the samples treated by TD process increase by 82.8%.

Thermal-cold cycling (TCC) treatment was applied to improve the dimensional stability of TiC reinforced steel matrix composite materials in this study. Also, the microstructure, related properties and potential stability mechanisms were investigated. When the TCC cycles were 3, Vickers hardness reached the peak value of 1051.7 HV and relative dimensional change was only 0.012% in a natural service for 30 days. Besides, the retained austenite disappeared and residual stress dramatically decreased from −740 MPa to −357 MPa. It demonstrated that the TiC reinforced steel matrix composite possessed the best dimensional stability after 3 TCC cycles. A variety of stabilizing mechanisms, including martensitic refinement, retained austenite-martensite transformation, carbides precipitation, and residual stress release were observed, hence resulting in a significantly improvement of the dimensional stability of the composite.

MoSi2-NbSi2 coating and Ce-modified MoSi2-NbSi2 coating were prepared on Nb-alloy through a new two-step process, including molybdenum slurry spraying and halide-activated pack cementation. The bare alloy was pulverized after oxidation at 1600 °C for 15 min. The both two coated samples have the effective protection for 24.7 h and 28.5 h with the weight gain rate of 3.578 and 2.947 mg2 cm−4 h−1, respectively. Ce-modified samples show better performance due to Ce has the ability of grain refinement. The reasons for the excellent performance are the good matching between MoSi2 outer layer and NbSi2 inner layer and the continuous SiO2 oxide scale.

A double-layer MoSi2 thick coating was prepared on Titanium-Zirconium-Molybdenum (TZM) alloy through a new two-step method, including molybdenum slurry vacuum sintering and halide-activated pack cementation. The coating was formed by a porous MoSi2 outer layer and a dense MoSi2 inner layer. The ball-milled fine Mo powder can effectively improve the coating density and the high temperature oxidation resistance. The oxidation protection time of the coatings prepared by coarse and fine Mo powders were 1 h and 6 h at 1700 °C, respectively. After oxidation, the coating exhibited multilayer structure consisted of SiO2 oxide layer, porous MoSi2 layer, dense MoSi2 layer and Mo5Si3 layer from the outer to the inner. With oxidation proceeding, the Mo5Si3 layer thickened, while the MoSi2 layer thinned and eventually transformed into Mo5Si3 completely, leading to coating failure because of the depletion of silicon.

Aluminum foam sandwich (AFS) structure materials have drawn much attention due to their unique structural and functional properties. However, the use of AFS materials as an attractive candidate for some applications was limited. In this work, AFS was fabricated by the brazing method, using Al-Si-based alloy, aluminum foam and steel plates as filler, matrix and panels, respectively. The microstructures of the soldered interfacial region, elemental distributions and phase identification were determined by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) and X-ray diffraction (XRD). The diffusion behavior of Si, Al, Fe and Cr was investigated. The effect of brazing time on the shear strengths of soldered joints was also analyzed. The results showed that the microstructures of joints were changed on increasing the brazing time. When the brazing time was 5 min, the solder started melting, which led to low shear strength. When increasing the brazing time to 10 min, the shear streng...

To improve the service reliability of components prepared by TiC-reinforced steel matrix composite material, tempering treatment was carried out to tailor the microstructure and properties of the composite. The aim of this study was to investigate the microstructure, properties, and dimensional stability of a TiC-reinforced steel matrix composite during tempering and to identify the underlying stabilizing mechanisms. We observed that the metastable retained austenite transformed into martensite and that residual stress released during tempering. The microstructure and properties of the composite reached an optimal state for a tempering time of 10 h. Furthermore, the relative dimensional change, Vickers hardness, thermal strain, and saturation magnetization of the composite were 0.0219%, 960.8 HV, 3.16 × 10−4, and 109.7 emu/g, respectively. Various stabilizing mechanisms, including retained austenite-martensite transformation and residual stress release, were observed during tempering, effectively improving the dimensional stability of TiC-reinforced steel matrix composites.

The search for multiferroic materials with simultaneous ferroelectric and ferromagnetic properties in a single phase at room temperature continues to be fuelled from the perspective of developing multifunctional devices. Here we design a single-phase multiferroic La0.67Sr0.33MnO3-BaTiO3 film, which possesses epitaxial single-crystal and solid-solution structure, high magnetic Curie temperature (~640 K) as well as switchable ferroelectric polarization. Moreover, a notable strain-mediated magnetoelectric coupling at room temperature in the way of modulating the magnetism with an external applied voltage is also observed. The synthetic solid-solution multiferroic film may open an extraordinary avenue for exploring a series of room-temperature multiferroic materials.