Combustion synthesis of TiC-based ceramic-metal composites with high entropy alloy binder

International audienceCeramic-metal composites TiC-High-Entropy Alloy (HEA) CoCrFeNiMe (Me = Mn, Ti or Al) were first produced by combustion synthesis method. Self-sustained synthesis occurs due to heat release from exothermic reaction Ti + C = TiC; the binder content was varied between zero and 40-50 wt.%. The combustion velocity and temperature gradually decreased with increasing binder content. Resultant materials consist of TiC grains and two-phase (fcc and bcc) binder. Vickers microhardness (100 g) of compacted cermet materials with 30 wt.% of binder was in the range of 10-17 GPa and increased with increasing bcc to fcc ratio. Based on experimental results and thermodynamic calculations, the mechanism of microstructure formation in TiC-HEA cermets was suggested

Fast mechanical synthesis, structure evolution, and thermal stability of nanostructured CoCrFeNiCu high entropy alloy

International audienceA powder of equiatomic CoCrFeNiCu high entropy alloy (HEA) was prepared by shortterm (120 min) high energy ball milling (HEBM). Our structural and chemical analysis showed that microsized particles of fcc CoCrFeNiCu with a grain size of 8 nm were obtained after 120 min of HEBM at 694/1388 rpm. The structural/phase evolution of CoCrFeNiCu HEA powder and its thermal stability were explored by high-temperature XRD at 600 °C, 800 °C and 1000 °C, by DSC up to 1500 °C, through the consolidation by SPS at 800 °C and 1000 °C, and characterized using XRD, SEM and EDX analyses. In-situ HT XRD analysis during 5.5 h of annealing showed the involvement of transient phases: the bcc phase that appeared in 1 h of annealing at 600 °C and disappeared at higher temperatures; and the fcc 1 phase (Cu-rich) arising in 2 h of annealing at 800 °C and disappearing at 1000 °C in 3 h of annealing. SPS consolidation at 1000 °C and annealing at 1000 °C for 5.5 h were found to result in the formation of singlephase fcc 2 CoCrFeNiCu alloy with a lean amount of Cu. The melting points for Cu-rich and Cudepleted HEAs were found as 1118 °C and 1288 °C (Calphad calculations) and 1115 °C and 1365 °C (DSC measurements), respectively. SPS consolidation at 1000 °C under a pressure of 50 MPa yielded the single-phase fcc CoCrFeNiCu 0.5 alloy that turned thermodynamically more favorable than the equiatomic one. Thus, we can suppose thereupon, that the equiatomic fcc phase that appears after 120 min of HEBM is metastable because of the excess of Cu atoms. During annealing in the temperature range 800-1000 °C, the Cu-rich fcc 1 phase precipitates from the initial single-phase alloy, while the "mother phase" transforms into the more stable Cudepleted fcc 2 phase. The chemical compositions of Cu-depleted and Cu-rich phases for the SPSconsolidated HEA CoCrFeNiCu alloy (at 800 °C) were determined from TEM-EDX analyses. Optimal combination of short-term HEBM and SPS consolidation can be recommended as a facile route to fabrication of single-phase fcc equiatomic CoCrFeNiCu HEA powders and bulk materials with good structural/elemental homogeneity

Detection statistics of the RadioAstron AGN survey

The largest Key Science Program of the RadioAstron space VLBI mission is a survey of active galactic nuclei (AGN). The main goal of the survey is to measure and study the brightness of AGN cores in order to better understand the physics of their emission while taking interstellar scattering into consideration. In this paper we present detection statistics for observations on ground-space baselines of a complete sample of radio-strong AGN at the wavelengths of 18, 6, and 1.3 cm. Two-thirds of them are indeed detected by RadioAstron and are found to contain extremely compact, tens to hundreds of μas structures within their cores.Peer reviewe