Bio-mimic Ti-Ta composite with hierarchical “brick-and-mortar” microstructure

Shenghang Xu, Meng Du, Jia Li, Kun Yan, Biao Cai, Quanfeng He, Qihong Fang, Oxana Magdysyuk, Bin Liu, Yong Yang, Yong Liu

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

5 Citations (Scopus)
262 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Nature materials, such as bones and nacre, achieve excellent balance of toughness and strength via a hierarchical “brick-and-mortar” microstructure, which is an attractive model for engineering materials design. Here, we produced nacre-like Ti-Ta metallic composites via a powder metallurgy process, during which mixed powders were sintered by spark plasma sintering, followed by hot and cold rolling and then annealing. The structure consists of soft Ta-enriched regions and hard Ti-enriched regions in a hierarchical and laminated fashion. The microstructural heterogeneity spans several scales due to the diffusion between Ti and Ta. This yields a novel metal-metal composite with a balanced combination of strength and ductility (1226 MPa ultimate tensile strength and 20.8% elongation), outperforming most of conventional Ti based alloys and composites. Via the complementary in situ synchrotron X-ray diffraction and electron microscopies, it is found out that multiple micromechanisms are active, including nano-particle and dislocation localized strengthening as well as phase transformation induced plasticity. The manufacturing route developed here is versatile, capable of making high performance bio-mimic metallic composites.
Original languageEnglish
Article number100463
JournalMaterialia
Volume8
Early online date4 Sept 2019
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Dec 2019

Keywords

  • Bio-mimic materials
  • Metal-metal composites
  • Ti-Ta
  • Microstructure

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