Additive Manufacturing of Tungsten-Alloyed Tantalum from Polyhedral Shaped Powder Blends

Abstract

Tantalum and tungsten are completely soluble in each other and are used in applications in the combined form of so-called tantaloys. They provide high melting points (Ta: 3017 °C, W: 3410 °C) and excellent corrosion resistance while maintaining high ductility for W contents up to 7.5 wt%. Providing good resistance to hydrogen embrittlement, Ta-W alloys are attractive candidates for applications in fusion reactors. This study demonstrated the feasibility of producing chemically homogeneous bulk material with fine grained microstructure from non-spherical powder blends with up to 7.5% tungsten using laser powder bed fusion (PBF-L/M). It is observed that cracking remains a challenge, especially with the increase in tungsten content. The effect of rapid solidification on the microhardness of up to 385 HV0.1 for 7.5% W is discussed. It provides initial indications of the possibility of achieving higher strengths and paves the way for further alloy development with regard to the additive manufacturing of this alloy family.

Keywords

Additive Manufacturing / Tantalum / Tantaloy / Refractory metals

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Herbert Horn-Solle and Oliver Michels for their well appreciated support in analytics and Thomas Wachowiak for his assistance in material processing and preparation. Additionally, we would like to acknowledge Andreas Weisheit for providing the necessary resources for the initial sample production at Fraunhofer ILT, Aachen.

Author Contributions

Conceptualization, S.-K.R. and M.B.W.; Methodology, S.-K.R., M.B.W. and P.K.; Validation, S.-K.R., M.B.W. and P.K.; Investigation, S.-K.R., M.B.W., F.L., D.N., J.S., P.K.; Resources, S.-K.R. and P.K.; Data Curation, S.-K.R. and P.K.; Writing—Original Draft Preparation, S.-K.R. and M.B.W.; Writing—Review & Editing, F.L., D.N., J.S. and P.K.; Visualization, S.-K.R. and P.K.; Supervision, S.-K.R. and P.K.

Ethics Statement

Not applicable.

Informed Consent Statement

Not applicable.

5Data Availability Statement

The datasets generated and analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Funding

S.-K.R. gratefully acknowledges financial support from the German Research Foundation (DFG) for the project RI 3559/2-1(grant no. 536270088)

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

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