Fabrication of TiAl-Mn Intermetallic Compounds by Reactive Electro-Pressure Sintering

초록

TiAl-Mn intermetallic compounds were fabricated from elemental powder mixtures by a reactive sintering method using an Electro-Pressure Sintering (EPS) equipment. The EPS method has a merit of easy control of processing parameters, such as heating rate, cooling rate, holding temperature and pressure. In this study, the effects of such processing parameters on the resulting microstructure of the EPS’ed Ti-45at%Al-1.6at%Mn intermetallics were studied. If necessary, a series of vacuum heat treatment was also conducted after EPS to control the microstructure. A fully dense and desired microstructure could be obtained by controlling the heating rate, holding conditions during EPS and subsequent heat treatment conditions. Especially, when the cooling rate was optimized in addition to other processing parameters during EPS, a homogenized TiAl-Mn intermetallic compound having a fully lamellar structure was achieved without subsequent heat treatment.