J. Mater. Sci. Technol. ›› 2020, Vol. 43: 189-196.DOI: 10.1016/j.jmst.2019.10.029

• Research Article • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Formation of spherical alloy microparticles in a porous salt medium

Nersisyan Hayk H.a, Kwon Suk Cheolb, Ri Vladislav E.b, Kim Wan Baeb, Choi Woo Seokb, Lee Jong Hyeonab*()   

  1. a RASOM, Chungnam National University, 99 Daehak-ro, Yuseong-gu, Daejeon 34134, Republic of Korea
    b Graduate School of Materials Science and Engineering, Chungnam National University, 99 Daehak-ro, Yuseong-gu, Daejeon 34134, Republic of Korea
  • Received:2019-08-02 Revised:2019-10-01 Accepted:2019-10-22 Published:2020-04-15 Online:2020-04-26
  • Contact: Hyeon Lee Jong

Abstract:

This study describes the development of a one-pot strategy to produce spherical alloy microparticles for advanced near-net-shape manufacturing processes, including additive manufacturing and powder injection molding. The AlSi12 eutectic alloy (ca. 12 wt% Si) system was chosen as the model with which the main experiments were carried out. The proposed process synergistically integrates a few common, low-cost processing techniques including the mixing of Al micrometer size particles with silicon and sodium chloride, heat-treating the mixture at temperatures of 650-810 °C, and the dissolution of salt in water to produce spherical AlSi12 alloy particles without the need to rely on costly melting and atomizing techniques. This new process can use laow-cost source Al and Si powders as the raw materials to produce 10-200 μm-sized spherical particles of AlSi12. The Ansys-CFX computational fluid dynamics software was used to analyze the flow behavior of AlSi12 liquid droplets and particle size refinement in the narrow voids of the sample.

Key words: AlSi12 alloy, Morphology evaluation, Particle distribution, Simulation, Solid-liquid transition, Spheroidization